Twain on Constantinople

If you want dwarfs—I mean just a few dwarfs for a curiosity—go to Genoa. If you wish to buy them by the gross for retail, go to Milan. There are plenty of dwarfs all over Italy, but it did seem to me that in Milan the crop was luxuriant. If you would see a fair average style of assorted cripples, go to Naples or travel through the Roman states. But if you would see the very heart and home of cripples and human monsters both, go straight to Constantinople. A beggar in Naples who can show a foot which has all run into one horrible toe, with one shapeless nail on it, has a fortune—but such an exhibition as that would not provoke any notice in Constantinople. The man would starve. Who would pay any attention to attractions like his among the rare monsters that throng the bridges of the Golden Horn and display their deformities in the gutters of Stamboul? O wretched impostor! How could he stand against the three-legged woman and the man with his eye in his cheek? How would he blush in the presence of the man with fingers on his elbow? Where would he hide himself when the dwarf with seven fingers on each hand, no upper lip, and his underjaw gone come down in his majesty? Bismillah! The cripples of Europe are a delusion and a fraud. The truly gifted flourish only in the byways of Pera and Stamboul.

– The Innocents Abroad

Thanks for the scanner, Jiff

Free Air Station
Originally uploaded by adamiwebb.

What I've Been Up To

Read a Phillip K. Dick novel. Went to Arizona. Ate some sushi and some turkey (separate meals). Drank a few margaritas. Confirmed something I thought was just a rumor. Received a box of books from McSweeney's that I neither ordered nor paid for. Bought lots of pants. Discussed the role of chance v. fate -- and the breeding habits of cats. Read a really good book and subsequently (temporarily?) lost it. Unearthed a strange reality. Borrowed some thick books which I haven't cracked the spine of yet. Wrote a couple letters. Started writing a story in the form of a letter. Read the new David Means story at the New Yorker.

Anyways, if anyone's out there, what's up and what are you reading?

Borges Personal Library

Jorge Luis Borges selected a series of 75 books dubbed his "personal library" to be published in Argentina with each volume featuring an introduction by him. That list (and that of another series, his "Library of Babel") is here. Martin Monreal, has helpfully created Amazon lists (as complete as possible -- some titles not available in English) for the personal library on these seven pages: one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. This is going to keep me very busy. I'll see you in two years.