Reprieved

I rid myself of another large carton of books. Mysteries by Ruth Rendell and Edmund Crispin. The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott. I received, much to my astonishment, sixteen dollars, with which I purchased "The Judgment of Paris" and "Alfred Kazin's America". I then began emptying another carton onto the living room floor to sort. After close consideration I have decided to keep a dozen books which I have had for many years but have never quite gotten around to reading:
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimares Rosa- apparently Brazil's answer to "Ulysses"
Natural History by Joan Perucho- a sort of literary vampire tale
Dog Years By Gunter Grass- even understanding that I have still never finished anything by Grass
Essays by Leon Edel
A book on the English Civil Wars, "War Without an Enemy"

and several others I am anxious to read: J.G. Farrell's Singapore Grip, Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons.

A few have a probational period until I have the energy to open them: Nancy Lemann, Carson McCullers, Glenway Westcott.

And some have exhausted my patience and appear overweening and unforthcoming:
Daniel Martin by John Fowles, Emily Holmes Coleman's The Shutter of Snow, and B. Traven's The Night Visitor.

And in a postscript.... I found a hardcover set of "The Raj Quartet" and bought it... and have found the Farrell to be an unprofitable read.

From "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook"

"When we first began reading Dashiell Hammett, Gertrude Stein said that it was his modern note to have disposed of the victims before the story commenced. And so it is in the kitchen."

Some marvelous Dorothy Parker

From a 1953 speech of Parker's discovered in a remarkable hardcover periodical called "7 Arts" which also includes contributions from Henry Miller and Washington Irving:
"I don't know what more to say about Hollywood. I just say it is a Stagnation. It is a horror. Brilliant flowers smell like old dollar bills. Those enormous vegetables taste as if they had been grown in old trunks."

elsewhere:
Gilbert Highet on kitsch:
"If you have ever spent an hour wandering through an antique shop, you must have noticed how your taste grows numb , and then- if you stay- becomes perverted. You begin to see unsuspected charm in those hideous pictures of plump girls fondling pigeons, you develop a psychopathic desire for spinning wheels and cobblers' benches.
There is a name for such stuff in the trade: kitsch. It means vulgar showoff, and is applied to anything that took a lot of trouble to make and is quite hideous.

elsewhere, Miller:
"The late John Dudley once chalked up over my door,"When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my revolver."

I now devote myself to the works of Anthony Powell

Powell's effortless mastery has won me over. From the first volume of the unfortunately titled "Dance to the Music of Time", "A Question of Upbringing":

"To Short, Sillery was a mysterious, politically-minded cardinal of the academical world, 'never taking his tea without an intrigue'(that was the phrase Short quoted) forever plotting behind the arras. Others, of course thought differently, some saying that the Sillery legend was based on a sort of kaleidoscope of muddled information collected in Sillery's almost crazed brain, that his boasted powers had no basis whatever in reality; others that Sillery certainly knew a great number of people had passed around a lot of gossip, which in itself gave him some claim to consideration as a comparitively influential person, though only a subordinate one. Sillery had his enemies, naturally, always anxious to denigrate his life's work, and assert that he wass nothing more than a figure of fun; and there was probably something to be said at least for the contention that Sillery himself somewhat exaggerated the effectiveness of his own activities."