Alexey Sklyarenko: In Transparent Things, Hugh
Person's father dies of apoplexy as he tries on trousers in a garment store.
When it happens, Hugh is in a nearby souvenir shop where there is a
snapshot-taking machine. The cabin's brown curtain was only half drawn,
disclosing the elegant legs, clad in transparent black, of a female seated
inside. (chapter 5)I'm not sure if there is a connection, but in "People, Years,
Life" (Book Six, 9) Ehrenburg describes how he was photographed by a reporter
when trying on trousers in a New York shop:...The photograph appeared in a
newspaper. When Ehrenburg asked its editor why did he publish it, the editor
replied "because the person was interesting for us." "But why the person's lower
part?"
JM: Connections, coincidences,
curios: In a review I read today various authors are
cited in relation to Dean Koontz, but the TLS critic forgets to
mention either Vladimir Nabokov (through Frost) or, at least,
sportsman Evgeni Nabokov (because of a pair of "Red Wings")*.
Let's follow the events:
From Pale
Fire: A curio: Red Sox Beat Yanks
5-4
On Chapman’s Homer, thumbtacked to the door.
From the
internet
(sports) Red Wings who know Evgeni Nabokov would welcome
goalie as new teammate.
Published: Friday, January 21,
2011.
Shades of Frost:
A Hidden Source for Nabokov's Pale
Fire
by Abraham
Socher
"In his commentary, Kinbote adduces
Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening" when the comparison between Shade and Frost comes up, and
describes it as 'a poem that every American boy knows by heart.'."
Shades of Nabokov(s):
The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean
Koontz
Epigraph: The woods are lovely, dark and
deep. --Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening
The
Darkest Evening of the Year is a novel by the author Dean Koontz, released on
November 27, 2007. The title is a possible allusion to Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"(wiki). In
the story, Amy Redwing and her
boydfriend Brian...
.....................................................................................
*- In honor of Trixie, ... Mr. Koontz ...strains hard
this time to place a pet at the center of his moral universe... The
story’s human angel is Amy Redwing...Meanwhile, in sex-and
materialism-soaked hell, the book’s two villains live lives that are warped
reflections of Amy’s and Brian’s. They are called Harrow and Moongirl...He also
shoehorns an assassin nicknamed Bookworm into “The Darkest Evening of the
Year”...Go figure: This character’s real name is Philip Marlowe, but he has
rejected it for such Vonnegut-inspired aliases as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot
Rosewater, not to mention one from Thomas Pynchon. When he grows more
deranged, he rants about Kafka, Wallace Stevens and James Joyce...If the
book’s finale features creepily gleaming surgical instruments, it also involves
“pearly fog” and a “white gate.” You’ve been reading too many sinners if
you don’t spot the pearly gates in that. (Books of The Times: "Not Just Man’s
Best Friend but God’s Best Ally " by Janet Maslin,Nov.22, 2007)
In "...this
topnotch thriller from bestseller Koontz...Amy Redwing, the survivor of a
horrifying marriage...This is the perfect book for thriller addicts who know the
darkest hour is just before dawn and for canine lovers who remember dog
spelled backwards is god." ( Publisher's Weekly,Nov. 27) --- "Trixie Koontz
has left this earthly plane, but she can still be found on the
Internet...She tells him that she is in a better place. He wonders whether
she was looking over his shoulder as he wrote his latest
novel..."