Thursday, September 27, 2012
Favorite Lines From De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period
"In one month alone, according to my diary of 1939, I completed eighteen oil paintings. Noteworthily enough, seventeen of them were self-portraits" (133).
"One week in May of 1939, about ten months after Bobby and I checked into the Ritz, I saw in a Quebec newspaper (one of sixteen French-Language newspapers and periodicals I had blown myself a subscription to)..." (133).
I love how he wants to stay connected with France even though he is originally from New York.
"My classmates seemed, for the first time, like a fairly decent bunch" (135)
"I think it's the sweetest, most complimentary thing I ever heard in my life,' Mrs. X said warmly to me. Her eyes sparkled with depravity." (138)
I like how he says she is morally corrupted..yet responds warmly.
"Also please do not forget to inform me if you have a reasonable command of the French language, as for all intents and purposes I am comparatively speechless in English owing to my varied and largely insensible upbringing" (155).
I doubt a woman who had only one year of high school is especially fluent in French. Also, it was silly that he said he was "comparatively speechless in English" after writing a long letter and very long P.S.
If you want, add your favorite quotes from this story or others that we've read.
-Luisa Lestz
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I love this post! A few of my favorites have to do with Jean's figurative descriptions:
ReplyDelete1. "Late that night, as I law awake in bed, with Mme. Yoshoto's Japanese-Malayan dinner still en masse and riding my sternum like an elevator, one of the other of the Yoshotos began to moan in his or her sleep, just the other side of my wall" (215).
2. Describing one of Bambi Kramer's (loving her name!) paintings: "The tallest boy, in the foreground of the picture, appeared to have rickets in one leg and elephantiasis in the other--an effect, it was clear, that Miss Kramer had deliberately used to show that the boy was standing with his feet slightly apart" (224).
i still think that one of the best quotes from this story are when he is writing a response to sister Irma's application and he bluntly calls his entire class retards.
ReplyDelete"I am delighted you are so well advanced, but I have no idea what he expects me to do with all my other students who are very retarded and chiefly stupid, in my opinion" (153). (small book)