More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
God moves the player, he in turn the piece. But what god beyond God begins the round Of dust and time and sleep and agonies? Jorge Luis Borges
paint-stained Persian carpet. In a corner, on a Louis XV bureau, sat a hi-fi surrounded by piles of records: Don Cherry, Mozart, Miles Davis, Satie, Lester Bowie, Michael Edges, Vivaldi
Yay Don Cherry!
the window on the right-hand side of the composition, showing a landscape beyond the central scene, and a round, convex mirror on the wall to the left, reflecting the foreshortened figures of the players and the chessboard, distorted according to the perspective of the spectator, who would be standing facing the scene. It thus achieved the astonishing feat of integrating three planes—window, room and mirror—into one space. It was, thought Julia, as if the spectator were reflected between the two players, inside the painting.
In dubio pro reo, as that old pedant César always said. Or was it in pluvio?
When it rains, vote for the accused
stopping for a few moments every now and then to look at the painting through half-closed eyes to judge how things were progressing.
It was odd, she thought, how quickly modern paintings became crisscrossed with cracks, often soon after they were finished, the craquelure and blistering being caused by the use of modern materials or artificial drying methods, whereas the work of the old masters, who took almost obsessive care, using skilled techniques of preservation, resisted the passage of the centuries with far greater dignity and beauty.
He’s obviously guessed that something’s going on. I’d stake the virginity of my next three reincarnations on it.”
the idea of chess as a game for those who take an insolent pleasure in walking perilously close to the Devil’s maw.
She had learned of a child who used to play chess in his head, staring up at his bedroom ceiling, whenever his father punished him for neglecting his studies;
Julia looked at the lines around her mouth and lips, at the black smudges where tears and sweat had made her make-up run. It gave her a pathetic look: the look of an ageing courtesan after a bad night. No doubt César would have drawn some scathing conclusion, but Julia didn’t feel like thinking about César. She found herself praying to life to give her the necessary spirit of resignation to grow old with dignity when her turn came.
The rain was once more beating down on the skylight, the sound of solitude, she thought sadly. It reminded her of that other rainy night, a year ago, when she’d ended her relationship with Álvaro and knew that something had broken inside her for ever, like a faulty mechanism beyond repair. And she knew too that, from then on, the bittersweet solitude that filled her heart would be her one sure companion as she walked what roads were left for her to follow, beneath a heaven in which the gods were slowly dying amidst great gales of laughter.
It’s odd how, against all logic, one clings to life in inverse proportion to the quantity of life one has left to look forward to.”
A commonplace of novels, but I think many welcome death as a way out of pain, immobility, and general lack of care
Maelzel’s prodigious player had a man hidden inside, according to Poe. Do you remember? But times change, my friend. Now it’s the automaton that hides inside the man.”
