Theo of Golden

A nice thing to do with this book:
buy an extra copy, wrap it in a golden bow,
and give it as a birthday present.

A few favorite passages
from Theo of Golden
by Allen Levi

This one just made me laugh:
29: "The sidewalk tables at the pubs and restaurants along Broadway were all occupied, and foot traffic was robust, made up predominantly of college students and other adherents to the idea that weekends begin on Thursday."

The significance of a picture frame:
128: "How is it, Theo wondered, that a piece of paper -- a letter, a photo, a ticket stub, a sketch, a painting - is suddenly transformed by placing it in four bits of wood beneath a pane of glass? What does it mean that we place permanent boundaries around transient moments? What does it say of humankind that we take such trouble to freeze specific memories, that we devote such energy to capturing and preserving the 'minute particulars' of our lives?"

The signficance of the bicycle:
146 / 166: "William Saroyan said 'the bicycle is the noblest invention of man.' And in 'Resuce the Perishing,' that story, the little boy did not want a new bicycle. He liked the one he had. It cost him $27.50 of his own money. Well, I don't want a new bicycle either . . . I like mine perfectly fine. . . ."

250: "They [brothers Tom and Douglas in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine] ride all over Green Town on their bikes. And they think Leo Huffman invented the bicycle, so they ask him to invent a Happiness Machine too."

Additional references to
Saroyan's "bicycle stories"
reminded me of
Flann O'Brien & H. G. Wells
For Ellen, as for so many of us:
146: ". . . books were her language, her neighborhood, her connection to reality."

Including: 148: Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O."
150: Carson McCullers
250: Harper Lee
254: James Hurt, "The Scarlet Ibis" -- I remember Ben & Sam reading this one in high school
256: Faulkner (Blue Jay)

The magic of majoring in English:
171: "After high school, I went away to college and got an English degree, so I could be a teacher. I read this essay one time about an English teacher, Whenever somebody asked him about his job, he would say he taught a course in magic. That made sense to me. Still does. He taught his students that words and books are like magic."

One big river
179: "Might it be that the water from the river of his childhood had found its way to this one, that the cyclical life of rainfall -- sky to earth to sky again, over and over -- had brought the elixir of the Iberian wine country to this place? That the river of gold in Portugal had come, through cloudburst and current, to this river of gray in Golden? And had soe of Golden's flow found its way to the hillsides of Theo's childhood? Was there, after all, only one big river that flowed across the earth?"

254: Additional memories of the River Marne

Theo's boyhood memory of seeing a fisherman pause
from his work on the boat to take up his paintbrush:
181: "Any fisherman knows that this is the best time to be fishing. But artists know this is the enchanted hour, when the sunlght is most magical. It's hard to know sometimes. Fish or pai, right? FIsh or paint? Well, I tell you, this time of year, I'm afraid I have no choice. I always make time for this."

The lasting impact of serving in Vietnam and
seeing the Memorial Wall for the first time
186: "It's amazing how a flat piece of stone can change your life, but that damn thing brought stuff up in me I'd been holding in for a long time. I'm still not sure why I went to see it, and I'm not sure I should have, but it probably did me some good."

Many more references to art and literature
51: Shakespeare & Co

161: "The biblically literate among them might have expected a finger to start writing on the wall at any moment: Mene, mene tekel, upharsin."
Previous connections on the Quotidian Kit
Blue Jay & Ginkgo & Picture Framing

Another blogger's
favorite Theo quotes

&

My random notes to self

1.
Is the mystery woman Mrs. Ponder?
(mentioned 2x: the photograph on Mr. Ponder's desk
and the painting in Asher's studio)

2.
Review Theo's visit to Asher's studio
and compare to concluding series of letters

3.
142: missing time
not sure about this one . . .
it's bad enough to misunderstand your own notes,
but particularly when it is a note about something
that's missing, expecially "missing time"!

Perhaps upon rereading, I can figure it out!