It may be as well to add one other particular, which is, that for fear of obstructing the circulation of the blood, he [Kant] would never wear garters; yet, as he found it difficult to keep up his stockings without them, he had invented for himself a most elaborate substitute, which I shall describe. In a little pocket, somewhat smaller than a watch-pocket, but occupying pretty near the same position on each thigh, there was placed a small box, something like a watch case, but smaller; into this box was introduced a watch-spring in a wheel, round bout which was wound an elastic cord, for regulating the force of which there was a separate contrivance. To the ends of this cord were attached hooks, which hooks were carried through a small aperture in the pockets, and so passing down the inner and the outer side of the thigh, caught hold of two loops which were fixed on the off and near side of each stocking. As might be expected, so complex an apparatus was liable, like the Ptolemaic system of the heavens, to occasional derangements.
“the last days of immanuel kant” trans. thomas de quincey
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from a collection of derek mccormack’s fashion writing
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Breton also tended to attach inordinate importance to details that no one else ever noticed. When he returned from visiting Trotsky in Mexico City, I asked him what the great man is like.
“He’s got a dog he absolutely adores,” Breton replied. “One day the dog was standing next to Trotsky and staring at him, and Trotsky said to me, ‘He’s got a human look, wouldn’t you say?’ Can you imagine how someone like Trotsky could possibly say such a stupid thing?” Breton demanded. “A dog doesn’t have a human look! A dog has a dog’s look!”
Breton was genuinely angry when he told me that story.
luis bunuel’s autobiography is great
Now we’re so used to film language, to the elements of montage, to both simultaneous and successive action, to flashbacks, that our comprehension is automatic; but in the early years, the public had a hard time deciphering this pictorial grammar […] I’ll never forget, for example, everyone’s terror when we saw our first zoom. There on the screen was a head coming closer and closer, growing larger and larger. We simply couldn’t understand that the camera was moving nearer to the head, or that because of trick photography the head only appeared to grow larger. All we saw was a head coming toward us, swelling hideously out of all proportion.
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these last two are from Darius James’ Negrophobia
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