The Beginning
Jan. 4th, 2007 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amelia_petkovaI have a habit of collecting quotes. (By the way, could anybody tell me how to make the topics in my sidebar into links to the categories, or point me to the right section in the FAQ?) I don't expect much, if any, of them to interest anyone by myself. I was getting tired of having quotes scattered all over the place in various notebooks and sheets of paper. (I seriously thought this LJ was just going to be a place to post stories? Hah!) The following are from Tropic of Night by Michael Gruber. I enjoy it because it's both a terrific novel and source of anthropological information.
Tropic of Night
Michael Gruber
“partly a product of wonder that I can still experience feelings other than terror.”
“Meaning itself slips from your grasp like an eyelash floating in a cup of tea.” (1)
“I think her mother was starving her to death, although usually if they’re going to starve them they do it in infancy. …an example of what Levi-Strauss called bricolage : a cultural artifact used in a new and creative way.” (2)
“I’m only afraid of people I know.” (4)
“But the Olo would want to know the precise kin and status relationships of Bert and Ernie, and what right Ernie had to offer help and what right Bert had to refuse it when offered, and how the results of the building project were to be divided, and, of course, they would know that a screwdriver is never really missing but has been witched away because Bert did not make appropriate sacrifices when he visited the babandole to consult the auguries before starting his project. …you never get back your cultural virginity.” (16)
“You can lie all you want in the published papers, but keep the journals honest.” (19)
“I love them already: the artistic sensibility of quattrocento Italy melded with the religious passion of ancient Israel. Or maybe they are the closest survival into modern times of what the ancient Greeks must have been: artists in their blood and bone, warriors, close to the gods.” (19-20)
“The nice makes me feel like a troll or a night-hag, or a t’chona , the river wight of the Olo, who comes at night and sits on the faces of dreamers and gives them dreams of smothering that are not only dreams. …My husband, I know, felt like this all the time, although he managed to keep it under wraps for a good long while, until he got to Africa. Africa will do that; Carl Gustav Jung took one look and ran like a thief back to cozy Zurich.” (44)
Opele nut
“…the Olo’s toward Ife the Golden, where the gods walked.”
dulfana
kadoul
fana
m’fa
m’doli
(45)
ch’andouli
dontzeh
(54-55)
Yoruba cosmos (57)
Ifa divination
orisha
babalawo
(64-67)
(Jane remembering Marcel talking about Margaret Mead)
“knew zip about culture, depending as she did throughout her career on the honesty of her informants. They all lie, darling, he would say to me, all the informants lie. Wouldn’t you? What would you do if a person in a weird hat and the wrong color skin accosted you on the street and asked you, You like fuckee-fuck, eh, girlie? When you start fuckee? Who you do it with? Old men? Boys? Other girls? How many times? You likee orgasms? You let boy touch-em titties? You like suck-em willie? Would you tell this ridiculous person the truth? You would not. I once actually peed on his foot I was laughing so hard at one of these riffs.” (83-84)
All of Marcel Vierchau’s speech (88-91), particularly the following excerpt(s):
“’A hundred thousand years ago, people with the same sort of brains we all have, speaking languages no less complex, lived, worked, loved, and died. Recorded history, however, begins between eight and six thousand years ago, coincident with the development of agriculture in several regions of the Old World. Before that, a great silence, some ninety thousand years of silence.’”
--Marcel (88)
“’You would develop an intimacy with your environment so deep that we children of industrial civilization can scarcely imaging it, an intimacy deeper, perhaps, than we have with our lovers or our children, perhaps even deeper than we have with out own alienated bodies.’”
--Marcel (88-89)
“’Of course there are some people who simply believe in magic in the same way that some of you believe in religion, but this is not what I am talking about. Again, this is a technology. It works whether you believe in it or not, just as a pistol will shoot you dead whether or not you believe that there are such things as pistols.’”
--Marcel (90)
“Where does love go when it’s gone?” (96)
“Spiritual doesn’t mean nice.”
“The Olo call it jiladoul , the sorcerers’ war.” (97)
“’I’ve seen this before, a black man, American, comes to Africa, all pumped up, he’s coming home, man precious lost Guinee. Then he finds out there’s no light in the window for him. The people here see him & they don’t see the black skin that’s always defined him his whole life. They see an American, with more money than they’ll ever have in their wildest dreams, just like the other Americans. But I’m black , the guy says, & they just look at him. Then it hits him: there ain’t no black people in Africa. We got the Yoruba, Hausa, Ibo, Fulani, Ga, Fon, Mandinka, Dogon & Tofinu & a couple hundred others, but no black folks except maybe there are white tribes like in S. Africa. So, hey, you want to look for roots? God bless, but don’t expect to be recognized. Guinee’s dead & gone & negritude ain’t going to help you. America is your nation, heaven your destination, and tough shit.’”
--Greer (103)
“Margarita Paz believed that you could taste bad feelings in the food and would not tolerate any prima donnas other than herself. Among restaurant kitchens, this one was unusual in having no actual crazy people in it. The scullion was not even an alcoholic.” (109)
the Chenka in Siberia
Starts page 123
“It is so hard, even for anthropologists, to take other cultures seriously.” (125)
“And what happens to you when you see something like that, if you’re a Western materialist, is that your mind sort of splits in two. …As for the other part, that one’s four years old and blubbering under the covers, and cold sweat is bursting forth embarrassingly all over its body. We wish to control that part, and we do, out of long practice. Such things cannot be. That’s what we’ve learned to say. (127-128)
ketzi
teniesgu
fentienskin
rishen/rishot
dala
ogga
(129)
“…reason why the Africans don’t fetishize antiquity is that nothing organic lasts in Africa.” (139)
“’Witchcraft, or sorcery, is about power, and religion is about grace. The religionist supplicates a supernatural power, and prays for spiritual benefits. The sorcerer attempts to bend occult forces to his will. The religionist prays, the sorcerer manipulates.’”
--Dr. Salazar (145)
Santeria starts page 145
Charles Apollon de la Tour de Montaille (146)
“She really did have the most excellent mouth, Paz reflected, like a teacup full of hot eels.” (153)
Ifa divining 167-170
“It’s no wonder literacy was so long delayed in Yorubaland, and the rest of Africa. There is nothing to write on that will last more than a decade.” (181)
Medical anthropology pages 197-202
“Delight seems to be a by-product of screwing around with the unseen world.” (208)
“…Paz having made her swear on the ghost of William Butler Yeats that she would keep out of trouble.” (231)
Marcel explaining chemicals and magic (247-250)
Jane thinking about her father
“I wonder, is that kind of person still around, will we ever have people like that again? He always said it was his generation, that peculiar lost one that was born during the Second World War. He used to tote up the things that his generation was last at. Last to experience segregation of the races, last to come to sexual maturity before women’s lib and the Pill, last to believe that the United States was invariably the good guy, last to defer without much question to teachers and elders in general, last to get the full load of dead white male culture force-fed into their brains and souls, last to grow up before TV became the ruling power. If Catholic, last to get raised in the pre-Vatican II shut-up-and-do-what-we-say, superstitious, devotional American church. The last to start screwing before Roe v. Wade , and hence and finally, the last to think it mandatory to marry the girl you got pregnant.” (251-252)
“I said it was like stumbling in a village in Turkey in which everyone was wearing chitons & worshipping Zeus & spouting Homeric Greek.” (349) (The main section of information about the Olo also begins at this point.)
“He said, This looks like the real Africa. Oh yeah & scary because of it, although I don’t mention this to him. There shouldn’t be any real Africa anymore.” (350)
“Writing kills the spirit of the thought, he says. He wants me to train my memory. Too late, I’m literate, the rot is too deep.” (354)
“I can’t see him lest we be irresistibly drawn into sexual congress. …Prob. Why sorcery never caught on at American colleges and universities.” (355)
grelet (359)
(Paz is the first speaker)
“’A little while ago you were saying that Satan was loose in Dade County.’
“’Oh, he’s loose all right,’ said Barlow, unfazed. ‘But that’s not the kind of fact I take to the state’s attorney.’” (363)
“It’s so easy to love lawyers when one is rich.” (377)
“’The point is, there’s no supernatural. It is all part of the universe, although the universe is queerer than we suppose.’”
--Jane (387)
“’What happened to your partner happens all the time in other cultures. It’s a regular thing in Southeast Asia, like headache or the flu. They call it amok or matagalp . And dreams—these other psyches really boogie out in dreamland. The Olo believe that’s why we sleep in the first place—so we can listen to and deal with the other folks who’re living in our heads. That’s one reason why extreme sleep deprivation leads invariably to psychosis.’”
--Jane (388)
“Guantanamera” (405)
“’My friend Marcel used to say that sometimes life serves up situations that only crazy actions can resolve.’”
--Jane (413)
“’You know what real love is, Detective? It’s not what you think. It’s not loving the virtues of your beloved. Anyone can love you for your virtues, that’s no trick. I mean, that’s what virtues are—lovable qualities. It’s the unlovely stuff that makes love. We all have a little nasty wounded place in us, and if you can get someone to find that and love it, then you really have something.’”
--Jane (417)
“Now it is just that moment when, as the Arabs say, a white thread can just be distinguished from a black one.” (426)
Note to self: look more into Santeria, Chenka, Olo, Yoruba, Tour de Montaille
Have patience with more quotes that will be coming.
Tropic of Night
Michael Gruber
“partly a product of wonder that I can still experience feelings other than terror.”
“Meaning itself slips from your grasp like an eyelash floating in a cup of tea.” (1)
“I think her mother was starving her to death, although usually if they’re going to starve them they do it in infancy. …an example of what Levi-Strauss called bricolage : a cultural artifact used in a new and creative way.” (2)
“I’m only afraid of people I know.” (4)
“But the Olo would want to know the precise kin and status relationships of Bert and Ernie, and what right Ernie had to offer help and what right Bert had to refuse it when offered, and how the results of the building project were to be divided, and, of course, they would know that a screwdriver is never really missing but has been witched away because Bert did not make appropriate sacrifices when he visited the babandole to consult the auguries before starting his project. …you never get back your cultural virginity.” (16)
“You can lie all you want in the published papers, but keep the journals honest.” (19)
“I love them already: the artistic sensibility of quattrocento Italy melded with the religious passion of ancient Israel. Or maybe they are the closest survival into modern times of what the ancient Greeks must have been: artists in their blood and bone, warriors, close to the gods.” (19-20)
“The nice makes me feel like a troll or a night-hag, or a t’chona , the river wight of the Olo, who comes at night and sits on the faces of dreamers and gives them dreams of smothering that are not only dreams. …My husband, I know, felt like this all the time, although he managed to keep it under wraps for a good long while, until he got to Africa. Africa will do that; Carl Gustav Jung took one look and ran like a thief back to cozy Zurich.” (44)
Opele nut
“…the Olo’s toward Ife the Golden, where the gods walked.”
dulfana
kadoul
fana
m’fa
m’doli
(45)
ch’andouli
dontzeh
(54-55)
Yoruba cosmos (57)
Ifa divination
orisha
babalawo
(64-67)
(Jane remembering Marcel talking about Margaret Mead)
“knew zip about culture, depending as she did throughout her career on the honesty of her informants. They all lie, darling, he would say to me, all the informants lie. Wouldn’t you? What would you do if a person in a weird hat and the wrong color skin accosted you on the street and asked you, You like fuckee-fuck, eh, girlie? When you start fuckee? Who you do it with? Old men? Boys? Other girls? How many times? You likee orgasms? You let boy touch-em titties? You like suck-em willie? Would you tell this ridiculous person the truth? You would not. I once actually peed on his foot I was laughing so hard at one of these riffs.” (83-84)
All of Marcel Vierchau’s speech (88-91), particularly the following excerpt(s):
“’A hundred thousand years ago, people with the same sort of brains we all have, speaking languages no less complex, lived, worked, loved, and died. Recorded history, however, begins between eight and six thousand years ago, coincident with the development of agriculture in several regions of the Old World. Before that, a great silence, some ninety thousand years of silence.’”
--Marcel (88)
“’You would develop an intimacy with your environment so deep that we children of industrial civilization can scarcely imaging it, an intimacy deeper, perhaps, than we have with our lovers or our children, perhaps even deeper than we have with out own alienated bodies.’”
--Marcel (88-89)
“’Of course there are some people who simply believe in magic in the same way that some of you believe in religion, but this is not what I am talking about. Again, this is a technology. It works whether you believe in it or not, just as a pistol will shoot you dead whether or not you believe that there are such things as pistols.’”
--Marcel (90)
“Where does love go when it’s gone?” (96)
“Spiritual doesn’t mean nice.”
“The Olo call it jiladoul , the sorcerers’ war.” (97)
“’I’ve seen this before, a black man, American, comes to Africa, all pumped up, he’s coming home, man precious lost Guinee. Then he finds out there’s no light in the window for him. The people here see him & they don’t see the black skin that’s always defined him his whole life. They see an American, with more money than they’ll ever have in their wildest dreams, just like the other Americans. But I’m black , the guy says, & they just look at him. Then it hits him: there ain’t no black people in Africa. We got the Yoruba, Hausa, Ibo, Fulani, Ga, Fon, Mandinka, Dogon & Tofinu & a couple hundred others, but no black folks except maybe there are white tribes like in S. Africa. So, hey, you want to look for roots? God bless, but don’t expect to be recognized. Guinee’s dead & gone & negritude ain’t going to help you. America is your nation, heaven your destination, and tough shit.’”
--Greer (103)
“Margarita Paz believed that you could taste bad feelings in the food and would not tolerate any prima donnas other than herself. Among restaurant kitchens, this one was unusual in having no actual crazy people in it. The scullion was not even an alcoholic.” (109)
the Chenka in Siberia
Starts page 123
“It is so hard, even for anthropologists, to take other cultures seriously.” (125)
“And what happens to you when you see something like that, if you’re a Western materialist, is that your mind sort of splits in two. …As for the other part, that one’s four years old and blubbering under the covers, and cold sweat is bursting forth embarrassingly all over its body. We wish to control that part, and we do, out of long practice. Such things cannot be. That’s what we’ve learned to say. (127-128)
ketzi
teniesgu
fentienskin
rishen/rishot
dala
ogga
(129)
“…reason why the Africans don’t fetishize antiquity is that nothing organic lasts in Africa.” (139)
“’Witchcraft, or sorcery, is about power, and religion is about grace. The religionist supplicates a supernatural power, and prays for spiritual benefits. The sorcerer attempts to bend occult forces to his will. The religionist prays, the sorcerer manipulates.’”
--Dr. Salazar (145)
Santeria starts page 145
Charles Apollon de la Tour de Montaille (146)
“She really did have the most excellent mouth, Paz reflected, like a teacup full of hot eels.” (153)
Ifa divining 167-170
“It’s no wonder literacy was so long delayed in Yorubaland, and the rest of Africa. There is nothing to write on that will last more than a decade.” (181)
Medical anthropology pages 197-202
“Delight seems to be a by-product of screwing around with the unseen world.” (208)
“…Paz having made her swear on the ghost of William Butler Yeats that she would keep out of trouble.” (231)
Marcel explaining chemicals and magic (247-250)
Jane thinking about her father
“I wonder, is that kind of person still around, will we ever have people like that again? He always said it was his generation, that peculiar lost one that was born during the Second World War. He used to tote up the things that his generation was last at. Last to experience segregation of the races, last to come to sexual maturity before women’s lib and the Pill, last to believe that the United States was invariably the good guy, last to defer without much question to teachers and elders in general, last to get the full load of dead white male culture force-fed into their brains and souls, last to grow up before TV became the ruling power. If Catholic, last to get raised in the pre-Vatican II shut-up-and-do-what-we-say, superstitious, devotional American church. The last to start screwing before Roe v. Wade , and hence and finally, the last to think it mandatory to marry the girl you got pregnant.” (251-252)
“I said it was like stumbling in a village in Turkey in which everyone was wearing chitons & worshipping Zeus & spouting Homeric Greek.” (349) (The main section of information about the Olo also begins at this point.)
“He said, This looks like the real Africa. Oh yeah & scary because of it, although I don’t mention this to him. There shouldn’t be any real Africa anymore.” (350)
“Writing kills the spirit of the thought, he says. He wants me to train my memory. Too late, I’m literate, the rot is too deep.” (354)
“I can’t see him lest we be irresistibly drawn into sexual congress. …Prob. Why sorcery never caught on at American colleges and universities.” (355)
grelet (359)
(Paz is the first speaker)
“’A little while ago you were saying that Satan was loose in Dade County.’
“’Oh, he’s loose all right,’ said Barlow, unfazed. ‘But that’s not the kind of fact I take to the state’s attorney.’” (363)
“It’s so easy to love lawyers when one is rich.” (377)
“’The point is, there’s no supernatural. It is all part of the universe, although the universe is queerer than we suppose.’”
--Jane (387)
“’What happened to your partner happens all the time in other cultures. It’s a regular thing in Southeast Asia, like headache or the flu. They call it amok or matagalp . And dreams—these other psyches really boogie out in dreamland. The Olo believe that’s why we sleep in the first place—so we can listen to and deal with the other folks who’re living in our heads. That’s one reason why extreme sleep deprivation leads invariably to psychosis.’”
--Jane (388)
“Guantanamera” (405)
“’My friend Marcel used to say that sometimes life serves up situations that only crazy actions can resolve.’”
--Jane (413)
“’You know what real love is, Detective? It’s not what you think. It’s not loving the virtues of your beloved. Anyone can love you for your virtues, that’s no trick. I mean, that’s what virtues are—lovable qualities. It’s the unlovely stuff that makes love. We all have a little nasty wounded place in us, and if you can get someone to find that and love it, then you really have something.’”
--Jane (417)
“Now it is just that moment when, as the Arabs say, a white thread can just be distinguished from a black one.” (426)
Note to self: look more into Santeria, Chenka, Olo, Yoruba, Tour de Montaille
Have patience with more quotes that will be coming.
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tropic of night
Date: 2009-09-21 05:38 am (UTC)Rameera
Re: tropic of night
Date: 2009-09-21 01:28 pm (UTC)Have you seen this interview (http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=876) with Michael Gruber? It starts off about another novel of his but then they segue into Tropic of Night.
Re: tropic of night
Date: 2009-09-22 01:56 am (UTC)In your post (2004) there is intent to search for more of his books. I am glad to report that he has written five more and it seems that Iago Paz is in them! Am 'amazoning' to get them!
Rameera
Re: tropic of night
Date: 2009-09-22 12:11 pm (UTC)