The waiting room of New York’s old Penn Station, demolished in 1964.
In 1924 the English writer Rebecca West, traveling by train across America, wrote, “It is, you see, so exquisitely irresponsible from the very beginning. One packs one’s trunks, in no particular hurry; it will do if they are ready an hour before starting. One gives them to the hotel porter, who in return presents one with checks. Never does one think of them again till one gives the checks to the express company at the station where one ends one’s journey, and it delivers them at one’s hotel. This, you will allow, is different from England where one has to keep watch on one’s luggage as on a sick child. Thus disembarrassed, one goes nonchalantly to the train which, should one be in New York, starts from a cathedral. Europeans to whom I have said that the Americans are geniuses in architecture would be angry with me for having understated the case if I could show them the Pennsylvania station in New York. We in Europe have tried to treat the railway station in the grand manner. England made its great comic efforts in the cruet-stand Gothic of St. Pancras and the monumental mason’s nightmare of Euston, and then gave up the attempt and relapsed into the formless chaos of Victoria and Waterloo. Germany kept up the struggle longer, but to no good. Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, vast as it is, is only remarkable because it produces, as one could not have believed that masonry could, the effect of obesity. One longs to advise it to give up bread and potatoes. But here, in New York, is a marvel of noble stone arching over an infinity of pearly light, with a certain ultimate beauty in its proportions which gives a solemnity to all that happens beneath. The crowds hurrying between the booking offices and the platform look dwarfed, yet for all that, more and not less significant, as processions of worshipers do in great churches. For some things—and those great and admirable things—one must go to America.”
I might note that train travel in this country isn’t quite so elegant these days. And the current Penn Station….
Jess Nevins on pulp science fiction in Nazi Germany
If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But, as it is, a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now – not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground – would be to throw down our weapons, and the betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether.Most of all, perhaps we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune form the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.
A map from an anime site I can’t read
Memoires Of A Suburban Utopia, illustrations by Anton Van hertbruggen (via Coudal)
My wife Teri found this lovely version of “Every Day I Write the Book” with Elvis and Ron Sexsmith (with harmonies from Jesse Winchester)
A 16th-century urine wheel. Where can I buy one of those?
VINTAGE BURGESS
Isidro Ferrer was commissioned to create a series of stark graphic illustrations, where several images combine on each cover, in a playful almost surreal way. Each cover has an off white background with simple san serif title.
Ferrer is one of the most reputed [sic] current designers in Spain. His work includes that for the National Drama Centre and his work for the newspaper El País.