#bravig imbs

[asfaltics]

putterings, 538-536

  I hit a nail where it wasn’t. The precision of that “sprawl” enough to dig his potatoes, or   whatever he neglected; a streak of lack, always late in the tide. the puttering stage,   vanishing expressions of The Iron Age What under the sun the same roof wrote.  

puutterings     |     their index     |     these derivations     |     20250601  

[watchoutforintellect]

If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.

Gertrude Stein, as quoted by Bravig Imbs in Gertrude Stein Remembered

[puutterings]

“I hit a nail where it wasn’t.” / “The precision of that!”

        Myron also did some varnishing of the oak timbers on the outside of the house, for he had a Ruskin feeling that he must contribute to the labor of his dwelling, and Delia said that Myron’s contribution was the best of all because it was done in a “spirit of pure craftsmanship” and the timbers he had varnished gave a “lift” to the house that it would not have had otherwise.       Myron was really happy <strong>puttering around with the workmen</strong>, and they didn’t mind because he let them do what they pleased. He listened very carefully to their conversation to get “the interesting American speech rhythms,” and he said their language was very vivid. He liked to recount at dinner how one of them had said, “I hit a nail where it wasn’t.”       “The precision of that!” exclaimed Myron with admiration. “It has such a virile impact.”

ex Bravig Imbs. The Professor’s Wife (1928) : 46 : link same (via hathitrust) : link

—

more (on the novel, and on Imbs) at 538  

[postcardsfromtheoryland]

The tea was good but the cakes were dreadful. I refused to admit this fact to myself, because I had left America with the notion that one of the French superiorities was their pastry. In that first year in Paris, I clung to my illusions desperately, whether they were important or not.

Bravig Imbs