"Fosberg's love grass, Franciscan manzanita, giant Palouse earthworm"

From Lydia Millet's (lovely, bleak) How the Dead Dream (highly recommended):

What wings lifted him then, what banks shored him up along the river of work? Not the mechanics of the deal: rather it was the faces and the words of those he moved through and past and with in seeking his object, the nuance of his own approach in knowing and predicting the impulses and calculations behind them, that captured his interest. In pitching his company's plans or services it fell to him to read the tics and quirks of investors as he sat across from them in restaurants, county commissioners as he rode the elevator beside them, urban planners across tables in well-lit rooms. He caught the small tells that accompanied a lie, the fluster and the cover-up that followed an inadvertent truth, the way these varied among persons: but he was most astute in that he gave the appearance of being caught up in his own velocity when in fact his mind was carefully fixed on the other.

Although always watchful, always wedded to the close observation of detail, he pretended otherwise. He projected a confident nonchalance, an air of serene neutrality, and with this attitude would casually make reference to vast sums. The rules for his own comportment were few and simple, and first among them was, always speak as though unimpressed by large figures; always convey the impression that the grandiose is commonplace.

And so it will be.

There is also an unusually beautiful list of names in the acknowledgments...

Ambush, pounce/pursuit, pursuit

"The thylacine, with its twistable elbow, was more of an ambusher."

I am in the home stretch...

The poison-dart frog, the three-toed sloth

Spent the evening finishing reading a dissertation that's being defended tomorrow. Encountered, for what I believe may be the first time, Wordsworth's draft epitaph for Charles Lamb: I am not sure I can find it online, but it includes the wonderfully awful lines "From the most gentle creature nursed in fields / Had been derived the name he bore" (it also was much too long to be inscribed on an actual tombstone, which bespeaks a certain self-involvement inappropriate to the occasion!).

It is a commonplace to say of Wordsworth's style that his strengths are also, often, his very great weaknesses. Here is another sentiment that caught my eye as I read, this one from a much better-known poem, and that makes me laugh and cringe: "I’d rather be / A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn." There is considerable evidence to show that Wordsworth himself was aware of this effect of risibility and sometimes mobilized it deliberately; nonetheless, I cannot feel I am an ideal reader for this particular poet...

Saw a very good theater piece last night, Future Anxiety at the Flea. From the description, it sounded as though it might be moralizing or preachy (a play about extinction and climate change!), but it is actually incredibly funny and also dementedly science-fictional in a way I very much enjoy; the dialogue is hilarious and sometimes quite moving also, and the performances, too, were excellent. Strongly recommended. (7pm curtain, eighty minutes running time!)

We were two for two, it turned out (too often dinner is better than the play): dinner at Petrarca was also excellent. We shared the piatto rustico, which basically should make that restaurant a destination for anyone who likes cured products of the pig (go there in the early evening, order that platter and a bottle of wine, you and a companion will basically have your whole dinner off it); then I had a Caesar salad with grilled shrimp and fresh berries with zabaglione for dessert.

Have only had time for some small bits and bobs of light reading on the side, and am too lazy to sum it up now; I think I must go now and read a serial-killer thriller to wind down...