Dope.
Screw the exordium.
Alberto Manguel's latest book is entitled Reading Pictures . That title didn't seem right to us -- the verb, surely, should be seeing. Looking at. But Reading does hint at a more theory packed gaze than is usual among the realists, so we overlooked -- or didn't read -- the title. Perhaps the title should have been Overwriting Pictures, a more confrontational, but also more truthful, guide to the author's intention.
But, but... just as we were getting into the book, we were stopped cold by two sentences set pretty close to one another in the introduction:
1. "With the development of perspective during the Renaissance, pictures froze into a simple instant: that of the moment of the viewing as perceived from the standpoint of the viewer."
2."Pictures, however, present themselves to our consciousness instantaneously, held by their frame..."
LI tried to go on, but these sentences so clouded our pleasure that
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads