[Dupin’s] method is a finer thing, a seemingly more supersensuous mechanism, than the ordinary processes of rational reckoning. It partakes of the irrational, and is therefore the highest kind of rationcination, since it is not the captive of its premises. What Dupin is so adept at looks to me very much like what ‘analysts’ in our own day call the preconscious mind. Dupin can summon and surrender to the associative linkages of preconscious thought, that wonderworking network of similes which the rest of us have papered o’er with the sickly cast of conscious thinking. Therefore he is that much more sophisticated than we, in his conundrum disentangling, because he is just so much closer to the origins of our being. his mind, working by metaphoric analogies, combines poetic intuition with mathematical exactitude.
—Daniel Hoffman.
—E.C. Segar.
The statue was black and seemed at first glance to be carved from one solid block; but little by little the eye could detect a great number of grooves cut in all directions and in general forming numerous parallel groupings. In reality the work was composed solely of innumerable whalebone corset stays, cut and bent to the needs of the modeling, Flat-headed nails, whose points no doubt must have been pointed inward, joined together these supple staves which were juxtaposed with art, without leaving room for the slightest gap….The feet of the statue rested on a very simple vehicle, whose platform base and four wheels were also made of black whalebone stays ingeniously fitted together. Two narrow rows of raw, reddish, gelatinous substance which was in fact calves’ lungs were aligned on a dark wood surface, and by their shape if not color, created the exact illusion of a section of railroad track; the four immobile wheels rested on these without disturbing them. A floor adapted for carriage wheels, formed the top of a completely black pedestal whose front displayed a white inscription which read:”The death of Helot Saribskis”. Beneath, also in snow white letters, could be seen this inscription, half French, half Greek, with a fine bracket: “Duel.”
Raymond Roussel.
Whatever I wrote was surrounded by rays of light. I used to close the curtains, for I was afraid that the shining rays emanating from my pen might escape into the outside world through even the smallest chink; I wanted suddenly to throw back the screen and light up the world.
—Raymond Roussel.
…the dream fantasies that [Winsor] McKay taps so unerringly are those of little boys in [Little Nemo in Slumberland] (giants, masquerades, fantastic travel adventures, “dreams of glory” in the Steig sense— wishes, fears and frustrations tailored to a child’s size), but generally those of adults in [Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend] (embarrassment through nudity, tranvestism, inability to perform occupational duties or having a pedadillo discovered; loss of identity; fear of dying, going mad or disappointing a sex partner).
—“Publisher”s Note,” Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend (Dover Books).
—Laurie Anderson.
Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.