Orhan Pamuk says #8: The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life.

"...Ipek laughed as if Ka had just told a very good joke, but before long her face turned deep red.  During the long silence that followed, he looked into Ipek's eyes and realized that she saw right through him.  So you couldn't even take the time to get to know me, her eyes told him.  You couldn't even spend a few minutes flirting with me.

Don't try to pretend you came here because you always loved me and couldn't get me out of your mind. You came here because you found out I was divorced and remembered how beautiful I was and thought I might be easier to approach now that I was stranded in Kars.

By now Ka was so ashamed of his wish for happiness, and so determined to punish himself for his insolence, that he imagined Ipek uttering the cruelest truth of all: The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life."

[from Pamuk, Orhan. Snow, New York:  Vintage International, 2004, p. 38.]

Page 352: "Nothing to worry about," Shanzenbach commanded. "Did I tell you I've bought on consignment ten cases of Bellett wine? Château de Crémat."

[From page 352 of the book]

"Nothing to worry about," Shanzenbach commanded. "Did I tell you I've bought on consignment ten cases of Bellett wine? Château de Crémat." He put his arm through Félix's as they walked toward the wreck. "It goes splendidly with your wife's monkfish soup I've heard so much about. It'll remind you of damp rocks. I'll have Covarelli bring a case by your house tomorrow."

"round and herby" says Elizabeth Gabay, with delicate
notes of lilac, peach, & rose

Félix knew from the looks on the faces of those three old men that a change, outside of regulation and good reason, had come over them. He decided to let it pass with the reassurance Shanzenbach gave him, and because of the close affinity he felt toward Owen and Georges. If he asked for a breathalizer test on any of them, they would've failed and then the atmosphere would've degenerated into one of embarrassment.

 

 

Baron G is a flinty, dry white of considerable complexity
made entirely from the Rolle grape.

This time I sat in the driver's seat. Revenant was next to me, and Ebert, Shanzenbach, and Owen sat in the back. I looked anxiously at the priest.
    "You don't know how to drive stick, do you?" he asked.
    I shook my head.
    "Where's that cop?" Revenant said, twisting around to the rear. "Hah! He's pulled up in back of us; the curious pain in the ass."
 

[Oenology note: the Bellett (or Bellet) vineyards were originally cultivated by the ancient Phoenician Greeks around 500 BCE.  The wine from Chateau Cremat is "the very best" (says Robert Parker), of "extremely high quality."  The whites can be made from a wide variety of grapes but the most popular variety is Rolle.  Rolle is a grape that is native to the area around Nice and is used in the production of these white wines. It's similar to Chardonnay. According to my hyperlinked references, "Bellet wines were highly appreciated by Louis XIV, and also by Thomas Jefferson."]

 

 



She tried to keep her father behind her until she could meet the commitments of her face. (from Grace Paley's "Faith In the Afternoon")

Grace Paley

I'm reading two collections of short stories by Grace Paley, who's been around the scene for a while, I know, but I never went down her street.  All I can say is, I love her.  Here are some snippets from Enormous Changes At the Last Minute:

He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber's snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, halfway to my heart.  He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. [ from "Wants"]

I know you Kitty.  You're one of that crowd.  You're the kind thinks the world is round.  Not like my sister, he said.  Not Anna Marie.  She knows the real shape.  She lived, Anna Marie.  What did she have, when she was a kid, what'd my father give her, a little factory to begin with, embroidery, junk, but she's shrewd and crooked and she understands.  My two brothers are crooked.  Crooked, crooked, crooked.  They have crooked wives.  The only one is not crooked, the one who is straight and dumb like you Kitty, he said, dragging her to him for a minute's kiss, is her husband, Anna Marie's.  He was always dumb and straight, but they have got him now, all knotted up, you wouldn't unravel him if you started in August. [ from "Come On, Ye Sons of Art"]

There is a family nearly everybody knows.  The children of this family are named Bobo, Bibi, Doody, Dodo, Neddy, Yoyo, Butch, Put Put, and Beep.  Some are girls and some are boys.  The girls are mean babysitters for mothers.  The boys plan to join the army.  They are very narrow-minded.  They never have an idea.  But they like to be right.  They never listen to anyone else's ideas. [from "Gloomy Tune"]

I have to tease a little to grapple any sort of a reply out of her.  But mostly it doesn't work. It is something like I am a crazy construction worker in conversation with fresh cement.  Can there be more in the world like her?  Don't answer.  Time will pass in spite of her slow wits. [from "Distance"]

Paley, Grace.  Enormous Changes At the Last Minute, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1999.

Page 248: We were in the Middle Ages, drinking wine from the salty marshes of the Camargue...in the company of two atheists and a collection of sculpted granite saints.

From page 248 of the book--

I laughed and ate more of the cheese and some of the sausages from Arles.


Sausages in Arles market

Shanzenbach moved us along, carrying a couple bottles of Listel wine made in the Camargue, on the Mediterranean shore, and steered us into a 14th-century church.   



Interior, Church of St. Trophime, Arles

There we were afforded absolute silence and near refrigerator coolness in the midst of a town full of parties and singing and dancing.   We sat in the back. Shanzenbach opened the wine, dispensing it in tiny paper cups stolen from Mr. Fourbiere of Arles. We were in the Middle Ages, drinking wine from the salty marshes of the Camargue, celebrating a Papal ritual in support of the Great Schism, in the company of two atheists and a collection of sculpted granite saints.



the salty marshes of the Camargue

The Great Schism of 1378–1417.  Rival popes had seats in Rome and in Avignon.
The election of Pope Martin V during the Council of Constance 1414–17 put an end to it.

 

 

Photo Credits:
1. Sausages in open air market, courtesy of Dimitrios Dalagiorgos.
2. Listel wine, courtesy of Vranken-Pommery Monopole, Berlin.
3. St Trophime, courtesy of Wikipedia.
4. The Camargue, courtesy of Alamy/PCL, Manchester Guardian.