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“Zippers are primal and modern at the very same time. On the one hand, your zipper is primitive and reptilian, on the other mechanical and slick. A zipper is where the Industrial Revolution meets the Cobra Cult, don't you think? Ahh. Little alligators of ecstasy, that's what zippers are. Sexy, too. Now your button, a button is prim and persnickety. There's somethin' Victorian about a row o' buttons. But a zipper, why a zipper is the very snake at the gate of Eden, waitin' to escort a true believer into the Garden. Faith, I should be sewin' more zippers into me garments, for I have many erogenous zones that require speedy access. Mmm, old zipper creeper, hanging head down like the carcass of a lizard; the phantom viper that we shun in daytime and communicate with at night.”
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“The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards. Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars. Most of the books were out of print, and no one wanted to read them any more and the people who had read the books had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic process of music the books had become virgins again.”
― Trout Fishing in America
― Trout Fishing in America
“Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances?
Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but listen:
Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality.
Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils' sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature.
I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes.
I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets.
Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace.
I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve.
I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein's brain.
I want a city's gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods.
And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.”
― Wild Ducks Flying Backward
Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but listen:
Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality.
Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils' sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature.
I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes.
I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets.
Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace.
I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve.
I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein's brain.
I want a city's gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods.
And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.”
― Wild Ducks Flying Backward
“She closed her eyes and tried to imagine sex entering the picture. Would sex enter the picture in a silk robe, or would it be as nude as a platter of cold cuts? Would sex enter the picture from the left or the right? Would it ring first, or would it just slide in slyly, too quick and slippery to be denied; or, would sex barge in forcibly, red-faced and green-bereted, pushing all other things aside?”
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“There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.”
― Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's
― Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's
Emsanders’s 2025 Year in Books
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