a. natasha joukovsky
extracts blog
After Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, where he tracks allusions to whales and cetology, I keep a running list of references to recursion, innovation, mythology, and glamour.
Henry James | THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
"Keen as her interest in the rugged relics of the Roman past that lay scattered about her and in which the corrosion of centuries had still left so much of individual life, her thoughts, after resting a while on these things, had wandered..."
Henry James | THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
'Well, you're not in love with her, I hope.'
'How can that be, when I'm in love with Another?'
'You're in love with yourself, that's the Other!'
Helen Macdonald | H IS FOR HAWK
"Since the dawn of military aviation, birds of prey had been thought of as warplanes made flesh: beings of aerodynamic, predatory perfection..."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery | WIND, SAND, AND STARS
"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away..."
Donna Tartt | THE SECRET HISTORY
"His students--if they were any mark of his tutelage--were imposing enough, and different as they all were they shared a certain coolness, a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least..."
Yuval Noah Harari | SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND
"...in order to establish such complex organizations, it's necessary to convince many strangers to cooperate with one another. And this will happen only if these strangers believe in some shared myths..."
Herman Melville | MOBY DICK
"And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned..."
J. D. Daniels | THE CORRESPONDENCE
"There are visions a man can only tolerate in a mirror. To see them face-to-face turns him to stone."
Oscar Wilde | THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
"This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul..."
Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel | HAIL THE MAINTAINERS
"In formal economic terms, ‘innovation’ involves the diffusion of new things and practices. The term is completely agnostic about whether these things and practices are good..."
Jack Kerouac | ON THE ROAD
"It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere."
Ovid | METAMORPHOSES
"As he tried
To quench his thirst, inside him, deep within him,
Another thirst was growing, for he saw
An image in the pool, and fell in love..."
Ovid | METAMORPHOSES
"My intention is to tell of bodies changed
To different forms; the gods; who made the changes,
Will help me--or I hope so--with a poem
That runs from the world's beginning to our own days."