until you dust it every day
*
one of two facing pages between 1799 and 1800, "A Chronology of Medicine"
(cropped to delete thumb (at bottom); levels 10 1.00 255)
Jonathan Hutchinson (1828-1913 *). Archives of Surgery 6 (1895)
University of Michigan copy, digitized January 18, 2006
same copy (less dramatic) at archive.org
—
“...you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proofread it. Then it does something to you that only reading can never do.”
— Gertrude Stein. Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1932/33) *
reading Natalia Cecire * her “Ways of Not Reading Gertrude Stein.” ELH 82 (2015): 281-312
Stein books open all round, ditto the Private Telegraphic Code of Swift & Company (1931).
aside —
drawn to such digitized images of nothing — oases of calm meaninglessness in deserts of signification.
tags:
dust; reading; not reading; stains
J. Hutchinson; Gertrude Stein