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.
Jonathan Franzen | PURITY
"There's that great passage in Proust where Marcel talks about imagining the face of the girl you've only glimpsed from behind. How beautiful the unseen face always is..."
Jonathan Franzen | FREEDOM
"But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special."
Jonathan Franzen | THE CORRECTIONS
"Elective ignorance was a great survival skill, perhaps the greatest."