“Schrödinger’s Cat”
by Ursula K. Le Guin
As things appear to be coming to some sort of climax, I have withdrawn to this place. It is cooler here, and nothing moves fast.
On the way here I met a married couple who were coming apart. She had pretty well gone to pieces, but he seemed, at first glance, quite hearty. While he was telling me that he had no hormones of any kind, she pulled herself together and, by supporting her head in the crook of her right knee and hopping on the toes of her right foot, approached us shouting, “Well what’s wrong with a person trying to express themselves?” The left leg, the arms, and the trunk, which had remained lying in the heap, twitched and jerked in sympathy. “Great legs,” the husband pointed out, looking at the slim ankle. “My wife had great legs.”
A cat has arrived interrupting my narrative. It is a striped yellow tom with white chest and paws. He has long whiskers and yellow eyes. I never noticed before that cats had whiskers above their eyes; is that normal? There is no way to tell. As he has gone to sleep on my knee, I shall proceed.
Where?
Nowhere, evidently. Yet the impulse to narrate remains. Many things are not worth doing, but almost anything is worth telling. In any case, I have a severe congenital case of Ethica laboris puritanica,1 or Adam’s Disease. It is incurable except by total decapitation. I even like to dream when asleep, and to try and recall my dreams: it assures me that I haven’t wasted seven or eight hours just lying there. Now here I am, lying, here. Hard at it.
Pharos is reissuing Jason Schwartz’s debut collection A German Picturesque, pictured on the right, above, by the original. The title was selected and introduced by Ben Marcus, who quotes from the interview Schwartz granted me last year—
I actually think that it was this review which led to Ben Marcus consenting to talk with me over the phone for an hour in December. I’ve been typing that interview very slowly and swear it’s on the horizon. Painful dreadful anxious work. Interview with Marcus to come. Review of Schwartz to come.
The spells of witches have the power of producing meats and viands that have the appearance of a sumptuous feast, which the Devil furnishes: But a Divine Providence seldom permits the meat to be good, but it has generally some bad taste or smell,–mostly wants salt,–and the feast is often without bread.
An article on cemeteries, with fantastic ideas of monuments; for instance, a sundial;–a large, wide carved stone chair, with some such motto as “Rest and Think,” and others, facetious or serious.
“Mamma, I see a part of your smile,”–a child to her mother, whose mouth was partly covered by her hand.
“The syrup of my bosom,”–an improvisation of a little girl, addressed to an imaginary child.
“The wind-turn,” “the lightning-catch,” a child’s phrases for weathercock and lightning-rod.
“Where’s the man-mountain of these Liliputs?” cried a little boy, as he looked at a small engraving of the Greeks getting into the wooden horse.
When the sun shines brightly on the new snow, we discover ranges of hills, miles away towards the south, which we have never seen before.
To have the North Pole for a fishing-pole, and the Equinoctial Line for a fishing-line.
Below: A (probably incomplete) list of films mentioned in Thomas Pynchon’s novel Inherent Vice.
I’ve listed them in the order in which they show up, and also in the editorial style in which they appear—initially, Pynchon separates the release year with a comma or doesn’t give a year at all, before settling on parenthetical citations—with the one quirk of A Summer Place—its year is indicated in brackets. Obviously this inconsistency is actually some kind of super-meaningful clue, a key that will unlock any unresolved mysteries of Inherent Vice—right?
Black Narcissus, 1947
Caligari
Metropolis
Dr. No, 1962
Now, Voyager (1942)
Fort Apache (1948)
He Ran All the Way (1951)
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
Roman Holiday (1953)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Vertigo (1958)
The Big Bounce (1969)
Champion (1949)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
A Summer Place [1959]
The Sea Wolf (1941)
Little Miss Broadway (1938)
Biblioklept 