Showing posts with label Ross. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ross. Show all posts

Wednesday, 7 September 2022

I have. With icing for his beard. They were fantastic.

One of the top-selling items in Highgate's small gift shops in a cookie-cutter in the shape of Karl Marx. 'Before we had the cookie-cutter, we sold lots of The Communist Manifesto,' Nick Powell, the visitor experience manager, told me. 'The sales of those have dropped off dramatically.'
'Did you have to think carefully,' I asked 'whether it was right to stock the cookie-cutters?'
'Do you mean are we dishonouring Marx by selling these things?'
'Yes,' I said. 'By bringing capitalism to bear upon his image.'
Powell laughed. He seemed to think the question absurdly po-faced, and perhaps it was. So I tried another: Have you ever made any Marx cookies yourself?'
'I have,' he said nodding. 'With icing for his beard. They were fantastic.'  

P. Ross,  A tomb with a view (2020), 117

Tuesday, 6 September 2022

Their role is to sit in the pew and watch it taking place

An Anglican requiem mass (he [Julian Litten], unlike Cola, believes in life after death) will take place at All Saints, King's Lynn, at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday morning - 'Wednesdays are always good days for funerals. If anyone wants to come up from London, they can catch the 9.44 and will be in good time.'

From the balcony of the church, a trumpet, trombone, kettle drum and choir will play the Prelude to Charpentier's Te Deum - and the funeral will begin. It will be done properly, soberly, tastefully, which is to say in accordance with tradition. ... 'There will be no eulogies,' he sneered. 'Nobody standing up and talking about me. No ghastly child reading a poem and bursting into tears. No member of the laity reading any of the lessons. I think it's tish. Rubbish. It's got nothing to do with the English funeral. Their role is to sit in the pew and watch it taking place.  

P. Ross,  A tomb with a view (2020), 31

Monday, 20 December 2010

In the city that made suicide an art

In the city [Vienna] that made suicide an art, [Otto] Weininger's was a masterpiece, and it made a posthumous bestseller of his doctoral thesis, a bizarre tract entitled Sex and Character

A. Ross, The rest is noise (2008), 41