An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.

H for Henry! St Johns Avenue, New Town. February 2011.

Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table is a collection of short stories connected by a narrative thread drawn together by the eponymous tabular display of the chemical elements that cursed the lives of many a science student!

Levi – a chemist by trade – takes the kaleidoscope of chemistry to create a vision of the synthesis of life. Like most of his books, it is autobiographical in tone, with all 21 stories inspired by a chemical element. To Levi each element had an associative value and he explores its properties and their capacity to drive certain thoughts and trigger specific memories.

As a (decidedly) layperson on the chemical front, he does a beautiful job.

As with all of Primo Levi’s books, I encourage all of you to get out there and read them.

NOW!

Another book I’ve finished is Daniel Kehlmann's Fame. All about identity, this is an Austrian page turner filled with overlapping narratives and literary devices. Think League of Gentleman scripted by Italio Calvino.

Not a bad little novel, I reckon that I’ll dip into more of Kehlmann's work, if the library permits me.

Comments

Jim said…

I love the texture.
Sydney - City and Suburbs

25 February 2011 at 10:13

Roy said…

Great job on capturing that old, weathered wood, Kris!

25 February 2011 at 12:05

Roddy said…

I like your take on Henry's initial. Now find an E for Ezra.

26 February 2011 at 05:58

Kris McCracken said…

You can’t beat an old bit of wood and a few rusty nails for texture.

28 February 2011 at 12:42

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

This will hurt me...

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