RARA-AVIS: IN THE HAND OF DANTE

From: Michael Robison ( miker_zspider@yahoo.com)
Date: 11 Nov 2003


Todd Mason wrote: Occupational hazard...Tosches is out of the New Journalism/hippie alt.press/first-gen (or so) rock criticism nexus. None of these overlapping fields are well known for concision or adherence to verisimilitudinous structure when a rant or musing can be tucked in.

*************** A couple things come to mind that I didn't mention. One is that he lists Selby as one of his favorite authors (or at least the character named Nick Tosches does), along with Peter Mathiesson. I've seen Selby mentioned here several times but haven't read him. I was surprised by his admiration of Mathiesson. I read his nonfiction "search for the snow leopard" book and thought it was touchy feely, and Tosches didn't strike me as the kind of guy who would go for that. Maybe the snow leopard book isn't typical Mathiesson.

The other thing is that Tosches is either a damn good inventor of details or else he has done some respectable research on the Middle Ages. The most amusing thing he mentioned is that the quality of paper went up when people shifted from wearing woolen underwear to linen underwear. The reason is that one of main ingredients of paper is discarded underwear, and linen makes higher quality paper than wool. Think it's true?

miker

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