Archive for ‘talking’

February 8, 2010

T.S.Eliot and his sister-in-law, New Hampshire, 1936

In the face of the intolerably new, Tom finds a renewed familiarity with an old charge from an earlier, more urbane time: “I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”.

February 8, 2010

Oscar Wilde, by Napoleon Sarony, New York, January 1882

Accustomed to declaring his genius, the great Irish wit evidences his capacity for soothsaying.  Mindful of the potential of the new for obsolescence he coined the aphorism, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months”.

February 8, 2010

James Joyce, Paris, early 1920s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking ahead to Finnegans Wake, Shem the Penman anticipates the spectral potential of sensing at a distance. The Wake remains to this day the first work of fiction to document a seance over the telephone.

February 8, 2010

James Joyce, South of France, 1922

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recuperating from his most recent operation for iritis, Jim struggles to keep up with the “get well soon” sentiments from well-wishers from Paris.  The callers include Wyndham Lewis, Djuna Barnes, Pablo Picasso, Sylvia Beach, Ernest Hemingway, John Quinn, Ford Maddox Ford, Ezra Pound, Paul Valery, Harriet Shaw Weaver, Paul Leon, Eugene and Maria Jolas, Samuel Beckett, Frank Budgen, Ettore Schmitz, Augustus John, Edouard Dujardin, Leon Paul Fargue, Jules Romains, Adrienne Monnier, Nora, Lucia and Georgio Joyce, Thomas McGreevy, Philippe Soupault, F.Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Andre Chamson, Pierre de Lapuy, Lucienne Astrue, Jeanne Bouquet, Nancy Cunard, Berenice Abbott, Stanislaus Joyce, James Stephens, John Sullivan, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Gisele Freund, Carola Giedion-Welcker, Cesar Abin, Paul Claudel, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Brancusi, Carl Jung, Maurice Darantiere, Francis Bacon, Malcolm Lowry, e.e. cummings, Man Ray, Andre Breton, Italo Svevo, Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, Giacometti, Josephine Baker, Django Rheinhardt, Georges Borach, Paul Ruggiero, Louis Gillet, The Croppy Boy, Herbert Gorman, Padraic and Mary Colum, Robert McAlmon, Constantine Curran, Kay Boyle, Louis Gillet, Adolf Hoffmeister, Georges Borach, Italo Svevo, Padraic Colum, Silvo Benco, Allessando Francini Bruni, Jacques Mercanton, Marcel Brion, Stuart Gilbert, Bernard Fehr, Mrs Frtiz Fleiner, Marthe Fleischmann, Andre Gide, Siegfried Giedion, Max Geilinger, Lady Gregory, Le Corbusier, Auguste Morel, Marcel Proust, Jean Paulhan, George Pelorson-Belmont, Karl Radek, Samuel Roth, Paul Suter, Patrick Tuohy, William Carlos Williams, Ottocaro Weiss, Louis Zukofsky, T.S.Eliot, AE, Rebecca West, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, John Rodker, Laurence Vail, Herbert Gorman, Grant Richards, Arthur Power.

January 16, 2010

Anti-draft protestors, San Francisco, 1968

The look infiltrates hippydom.

January 16, 2010

Troops, Meuse-Argonne offensive, France, 1918

“Well, I say old chap, drinks would be spiffing but I’m rather tied up with old Gerry at the moment”

January 16, 2010

Troops, Meuse-Argonne offensive, France, 1918

‘Fancy popping off for a bit and doffing a G & T and spot of the old crumpet, my good fellow?’

January 16, 2010

New York street scene, 1938

Not even the temptation of red, juicy apples could draw Eduard Suvee, manager of the Yankees star pitcher, Lefty Gomez, from his solipsism as he sped past the cart on his way to yet another important meeting at Yankee Stadium.

January 16, 2010

Edward Chwasta and unidentified escort, Supper Club, New York, 1938

“And I said, Bovey old chap, you really are a crashing bore. And so the bastard hit me!”

January 16, 2010

Unidentified beatnik, San Francisco, 1957

During a coffee-house reading from On the Road, Jack Kerouac (out of picture) seems to have bored at least one member of the audience, who splits the scene.  He was later denounced by the writer as a square.