hogglestock

 
I was trying to think of a clever hook for the pictures I am about to post when I began thinking about why I was posting them in the first place–other than John urging me that is. What occurred to me was that readers, and certainly my readers, like this kind of thing. Then I began thinking of all the affinities beyond books that we readers seem to share. And although each of these items is not universal to all readers, or even to all readers of My Porch, I think if we were all in a room together these are the things we would end up talking about.

• Lists
• Libraries (natch)
• Hot beverages (tea, the coffee family, cocoa)
• Baking
• Book shops (see Libraries)
• Travel (actual or vicarious)
• Helene Hanff
• Twitter (a very book-friendly place)
• Pets (Lucy, Deacon, Sherpa, Odie, Jasper, Ritchey, Hops, etc.)
• CSAs, Farmers Markets, and fresh vegetables in general
• Typewriters
• Knitting (not something I am interested in, but I know you are legion)
• Gardens

Ah yes, gardens, the reason for this post, phtots of John’s efforts in the garden paying off…

While I am at it, here are some photos from our recent road trip to Ithaca to go to a book sale.

Proof of the Canadian invasion of the border states. If it weren’t for Tim Hortons, I would say that it is time to build that wall.

One of the great things about a road trip to central New York from DC is that you can avoid the I-95 corridor entirely. Thirty minutes or so on I-270 and then you can jump onto U.S. 15 all the way trhough Pennsylvania, which is in surpisingly good repair, scenic, and low on traffic.

With lumberjacks like this…

On the way home we stopped by Whitmore Farm which is owned and farmed by friends of ours.

I don’t know which of the next three photos came first.  ;-)

Can’t forget about little Lucy.

  
Not only do I have a really hard time allowing someone to choose a book for me to read, but I am so much of a contrarian I tend to rebel against reading lists of my own creation even before the digital ink is even dry. Yet I am oddly drawn to something Amanda, my co-host for the upcoming Barbara Pym Reading Week, blogged about yeterday. She is participating in the Classics Club Spin #2 in which participants make a list of 20 classics they are dying to read, dreading to read, or some combination thereof. Then on May 20th, the good people at the Classics Club choose a random number between 1 and 20 and then you go off and read the classic on your list that corresponds with the chosen number by July 1st.

I couldn’t resist. Here is my list. I have peppered it with things I am dying to read, some that I am less interested in reading but are part of finishing off my Century of Books list, and some are weighty classics that have been gathering dust in my library. In all cases I own all of the books listed, so I will have no excuses.

1. The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett
2. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

3. Jessie Philips by Fanny Trollope
4. The Old Man and Me by Elaine Dundy
5. Young Lonigan by James T. Farrell
6. The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac by Eugene Field
7. Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
8. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
9. The Well by Sinclair Ross
10. Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
11. Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
12. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
13. Pamela by Samuel Richardson
14. Vanity Fair by Thackery
15. Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens
16. An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
17. Summer Will Show by Sylvia Warner Townsend
18. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
19. Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell
20. Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley

  
The recent weekend road trip means that I haven’t had much time read. Still happily working away at A Suitable Boy. To recap my recent reads, I will start with the one I wanted to hurl across the room because it was so bad…

Constance Harding’s (Rather) Startling Year (US)
A Surrey State of Affairs (UK) by Ceri Radford
Let me try and make a few comparisons to help explain this piece of derivative dreck: The cluelessness of Hyacinth Bucket was only marginally funny when the show was new 23 years ago. Radford seems to think that putting Hyacinth (Constance) on the Internet is a sure fire way to make this book hilarious. It isn’t.  Bridget Jones all grown up at 53 but without any of Helen Fielding’s wit. But Constance is so much cooler than Bridget because she has a blog rather than a diary. What innovation. It’s as if Radford took every one-dimensional starchy British character she had ever seen in American film and TV and decided that was going to be her heroine. This is 30-year old Radford (she was only ten when Hyacinth was cutting edge) trying to get into the brain of a 53-year old and failing miserably. There are ways to portray out of touch housewives that are much funnier and less insulting to the intelligence of readers (and housewives).

Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells
I read this one to cover 1992 on my A Century of Books list. And it certainly had all of the hallmarks of books of that period: drunken, abusive parents (oh, look that pregnant woman is smoking), satirical look at the Catholic church, sassy southern women just begging to be adapted to the Hollywood screen. This prequel to the Ya-Ya sisterhood is a poor man’s Steel Magnolias.

Surprising Myself by Christopher Bram
The 1987 debut novel of Gods and Monsters (Father of Frankenstein) author Christopher Bram. I read this one right after high school and loved it. Twenty-six years later the landscape for young gays is so, so different, so this reads a bit like historical fiction, but it still managed to charm me a second time.

Quartet by Jean Rhys
The only “serious” book I have read lately. Enjoyable in that tragic French life kind of way. Woman’s husband ends up in prison, she becomes a mistress to survive…angst, jealousy, more angst. I actually quite liked it. Makes me wish I had gotten my hands on the two Jean Rhys Penguins before Frances found them.

   
This past weekend we headed up to Ithaca, New York so that I could go to the gigantic Tompkins County Friends of the Library book sale.  They have the sale twice a year in October and May. The sale goes for three successive weekends with the prices getting cheaper each day. On the first day of the sale hardcover books are all $4.50. By the 4th day (the day we were there) hardcover prices are down to $2.50 a title. And by the final day of the sale you can get all you can fit in a bag for just $1.

We probably wouldn’t have driven six hours one way for just a sale, but since we have friends in Ithaca we hadn’t seen in a while, we decided to make a weekend of it. JoAnn at Lakeside Musings was at the sale about six hours after I was. It looks like she had good luck with trade paperbacks which I skipped entirely. Too many people in my way. Plus I was looking for older things that couldn’t possibly interest anyone but me.

Now, the books.

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
I have heard this one is a bit of a depressing snooze. But it is seminal work of early LGBT fiction, so I thought I would give it a go.

An Unsuitable Attachment and A Few Green Leaves by Barbara Pym
I am trying to get all of Pym’s books in these hardcover Dutton editions. I have five of them now. But this Green Leaves turns out to be a dupe of something I already have. I am going to send it to JoAnn to thank her for sending me an Angela Thirkell novel.

The Glory of the Conquered by Susan Glaspell
I keep collecting the works of this author, I think she has been reissued by Persephone, but I haven’t read any of them yet. I hope I like her work or I will have a lot of duds on my shelf.

The Railway Police and The Last Trolley Ride by Hortense Calisher
I know nothing about this book, but I like the fact that both novellas are train related. And the author’s name is Hortense. It must be fantastic.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
There were several copies of this on the shelf each with a different pattern on the cover. Seemed like it was worth a go.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Lady Anna by Anthony Trollope
I collect these little Oxford World Classic hardcovers so I don’t always need to like the actual work. I am ambivalent about Dickens but love Trollope. Only it turns out I already had both of these at home.

Although I only recognized Penelope Lively’s name, I thought this look interesting and whould go well with my Anglo-iana collection. But now looking at the cover, I realize I also know Helen Cresswell. She wrote a series of juvenile books that were favorites of mine gorwing up even though I only understood about half of the English (vs American) vocabulary.

Too many people thing I am an a-hole for not liking du Maurier. So I am going to give this one a go. Many tell me this is their favorite. Hopefully third time will be the charm for me with this author.

Another little Trollope in an Oxford World Classic edition. A lovely edition of Margery Sharp’s The Foolish Gentlewoman which I was so happy to find. Turns out I also have that one at home. Sheesh. And then a gigantic bio of ICB.

While in Ithaca, we also stopped by the fantastic farmer’s market. One of the best I have ever been to. It has its own purpose built pavilion right near the foot of Cayuga Lake.

  
Not resting on my laurels
My friend Roz and I are in a competition to see which of us can read a 100 books first. Earlier in the year she had expressed a desire to read at least a hundred books in 2013. Knowing what a competitive person she is, I thought a little rivalry was all she needed to achieve her goal. Last time we checked-in with each other she was at 36 books and I was at 41. I think both of these totals are pretty impressive with only four months of the year gone. But all Roz could see was that she wasn’t in the lead. I think she is a little hard on herself. She will clearly meet her goal for the year and she is a much, much busier person than I am. If she isn’t running half marathons she is running all over DC doing more things in a year than I have done in a decade.

So the other day when I was at the fantastic Politics and Prose not far from my house I spotted the enormous Vikram Seth novel A Suitable Boy. I have always been curious about this book. I even think Roz mentioned that she was thinking of reading. And it was just one of those moments when one knows the time is right. Plus I thought with 41 (now 42) books completed for the year already I certainly had the breathing room and it might give Roz the chance to keeping running half marathons and to take the lead in our reading competition.

Like I did with War and Peace, I have decided to keep a counter of my progress. Unlike War and Peace, A Suitable Boy is several degrees more enjoyable to read and I find the Indian names easier to follow than Russian ones.

Spring has sprung like crazy
After some weird, freakishly warm weather in early April, temperatures here in DC have settled into a very nice, coolish, largely, sunny spring. The early warmth seems to have really encouraged everything to grow and bloom at once. This is in crazy contrast to the snow that continues to dog the midwest.

And speaking of weather
The film adaptation of Julia Strachey’s Cheerful Weather for the Wedding arrived from Netflix on Friday. I found it thoroughly enjoyable. I think the fact that I had read the book a few years ago helped put me in the right frame of mind for watching it. I wonder what I would have thought if I hadn’t known what to expect. Although it had been a while since I read the book, I was pretty sure that liberties had been taken. Nothing jarring, just different. So when I finished the film I pulled the book off the shelf and read it in one sitting. Both book and film benefited from the reread.

The book takes place in March, the film takes place at Christmas. My guess is so that they could dress the set to make it clear that it was a cold time of the year even if the landscape didn’t indicate so. For those of you interested in architecture, note the way they did the (what appears to be lead?) flashing above the door. Usually, at least in DC, it would be done with a simple, but less elegant stepped pattern.

Flashback to sunnier times.

You can’t tell in this photo, but there were a couple of scenes in the film when actress Zoe Tapper looked a bit…plump. I thought she might have been pregnant during filming. Turns out she had a child in 2011, the film came out in 2012, so I may be correct.

The wonderful Barbara Flynn played Aunt Bella. She also played Mrs. Jamieson in Cranford.

I am annoyed that this picture loaded fine as a thumbnail on Google, but the original image refuses to load. But Kitty was my favorite character in the film, so I decided to include it anyway.

That’s Gareth from The Office on the left and the wonderful Fenella Woolgar on the right.

Barbara Pym week is less than a month a way
Barbara Pym week begins on June 1st. Have you decided how you are going to celebrate Pym’s centenary? Amanda and I will have a week’s worth of Pym related posts and links. And lots of prizes. Books, bags, teabag holders…

Have you ever had to create an index?
The history of St. Elizabeths Hospital that I have spent a year writing for my job is so close to done I can taste it. I decided that it couldn’t be worth its weight in digital 0s and 1s if it didn’t have an index. Not only does it behoove a work of non-fiction to have one, but I like the thought of putting some obscure names that I plucked out of millions of pages of archival material out into the cybersphere. Who knows who might find that useful. Maybe someone searching for their ancestors will stumble upon the fact that they were once fired from St. Es, or led a staff rebellion there, or ran the prosthetic limb shop. You just don’t know. At any rate, creating an index is kind of fun and plenty tedious.  Still, it almost done and should be online around mid-month.

Lucy’s version of TV
There is a hole in the fence between our yard and the neighbor’s yard. Sometimes Lucy gets transfixed with whatever she sees on the other side and will sit for an hour just staring.

Another rapid-fire round of the briefest of thoughts on my recent reads.

Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay
Loved, loved, loved this book. Macaulay follows the women in a family over the course of a summer in 1920, each one of them representing a different age/generation. It was beautiful, thoughtful, sad and overall really wonderful. A must for the Persephone crowd.

Final Payments by Mary Gordon
After taking care of her invalid father for eleven years (since she was 19!) Isabel finds herself without a life when he passes away. (Imagine missing your 20s.) When she gets into the work world the descriptions of sexual harassment would seem totally overdrawn if it hadn’t been written in 1978. Parts of the book reminded me a bit of Mary McCarthy’s The Group.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
I really liked this novel and can understand why it won the Booker. Such an interesting take on memory and regret. I could empathize with protagonist Tony Webster when he receives a letter that he had written decades before. What seemed so justifiable and clever in his early 20s was in reality cruel and over the top and mean. Fascinating stuff. The friend who gave it to me said it reminded him a bit of Anita Brookner. Kind of made sense, but too much happens to be truly like Brookner.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
When I realized I would never make it through Mrs. Dalloway,  my Century of Books choice for 1925, I had to find a replacement. (I thought I would be okay with Mrs. D given that I have seen the film version twice and The Hours twice. Didn’t work.) The reason Gatsby didn’t make my Century of Books list in the first place is that I had read it before and I was trying to keep re-reads off that list as much as possible. And then trying to find a copy that didn’t have Leo DiCaprio on the cover was not an easy task, but I managed it. As it turns out I might as well never have read Gatsby for all I remembered about it. So what did I think? Does it matter? Everyone and their dog have analyzed this one. I will say that it’s wonderfully evocative and provides a disporportionate number of things one could discuss for its slim 180 pages. I particularly liked one description. At one of Gatsby’s parties the bar was “stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.” Imagine a cordial that was so old fashion that it was already forgotten in 1925. And what could the flavors have been?

I won’t be seeing the movie. The trailer pisses me off.

And if you have ever wondered how movie tie-in covers sell compared to other covers, check out this article in the New York Times about the Gatsby covers.

Most Talkative by Andy Cohen
The autobiography one of the mastermind behind Bravo’s reality empire. Love his live nightly show and I loved parts of this book. Made me laugh out loud. But it got a bit boring when he got into what turned out to be the not very tell all part of this tell all.

Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
I think I would have liked this better 39 years ago. Charming and all that but so tedious to read with no child around.

Under Fire by Henri Barbusse
A story of life in the trenches during World War I, written while the war was still going on. Very interesting (and gruesome) to read a treatment of the war written before the author knew how it ended. Not unlike the war, it felt like a slog. (How’s that for trivializing war?)

The Judge by Rebecca West
I have liked (and loved) other books by Rebecca West, but The Judge will never join that list. Man, I disliked this one. Might have been much more compelling if it had been half as long. West’s editor must have been on vacation.

  
  

(photo credit: Christopher L. Smith)

One of my favorite bookstore in Manhattan
There are many amazing bookstores in NYC, but  I think Three Lives & Co. is one of the best. A gorgeous little gem on west 10th Street in Greenwich Village, Three Lives is particularly good for literary fiction. It is one of those bookshops that seems curated rather than stocked. The resulting table displays and staff picks are too exuberant to be elitist. This is a store that makes readers want to pick up books by the armful. I am not prone to buy new books, but Three Lives always makes me do just that. Even when my luggage is too full.

I ran into a few other wonderful shops on our recent trip to New York, most of them secondhand stores (my preference) and I did find one or two other items, but alas I failed to even note the names of the other stores. I have also decided once and for all that The Strand is for chumps, tourists, and wannabes. Now before you take me to task for such a leap of hyperbole, I realize that it can be just the ticket for finding any number of treasures, but god almighty the weekend crowds are annoying as all get out. They make me want to stay up front to buy bags and t-shirts and not even try and squeeze down the narrow aisles and find an actual book. If you do go, at least do it during the week. Might not be as insane.

The books

The Gardam is the third in the Old Filth trilogy. The Barnes and the Jekyll were gifts from my friend Ron who was with me.

The Potato Peel Pie Award for Precious Title goes to…

The cover covers up for this hokey title. I have a sneaking feeling I won’t actually like the book. Stay tuned.

I am on the Supreme Court of judging books by their covers
We all do it. I just wish I could get paid to do it. In addition to the Ellis above, these two and the Swift jumped into my hands thanks to their alluring covers.

My friend Ron pointed this one out and bought it for me. I am just waiting for my OCD to kick in which will require me buying the whole series.

I would buy a new Lively no matter what, but this beautiful cover made it truly irresistable.

Although the Lively cover shows a Tulip Magnolia (of which we have a lot in DC), it reminded me of these cherry blossoms I put in our living room a few weeks ago. They had fallen off a neighbor’s tree after our late March snow so I brought them inside where they continued to bloom and even to sprout leaves.

What would Anita think?

I know Brookner wouldn’t mind a drink, but what would she think of my friend enjoying a Cosmo while reading Look at Me? I picture her drinking tumblers of brown liquor.

  

Even the publicity photo looks like one for a Real Housewives show.

I watched the first two hours of Mr. Selfridge last night. Overall an amusing period diversion, but has the potential to be as shallow and laughable as Downton Abbey.

Just like when I watch any of the Real Housewives shows, all I could think was “can’t everyone just get along?”

In particular, poor Agnes Towler. Already within the first two hours she has the following to worry about:

• A supervisor who has it in for her from day one
• Trashy co-workers who also have it in for her and make fun of her
• A developmentally disabled brother who is unknowingly getting caught up in a theft scheme
• A father who is a mean drunk and embarrasses her at work
• A chief of staff who thinks she is trying to blackmail him
• A soon to be boyfriend who almost became a high class hooker

As for Mr. Selfridge, he is doing himself no favors by:

• Embarking on an affair with a mercenary actress
• Becoming beholden to Lady May who will, no doubt, ask for more than a pound of proverbial flesh at some point
• Alienating his wife who is probably going to embark on an affair with a hottie artist
• Taking advice from his Machiavellian mother who will probably just enable his bad behavior but could also cause him trouble in other ways

Other observations:

• The opening scene where Mr. Selfridge interacts with the floor walker at Gamages. I have had similar customer service experiences in England.
• Jeremy Piven seems unable to act preferring to utter every line as a proclamation. But he looks sexy as all get out with his beard.
• The scene where Mrs. Selfridge meets the hottie artist at the National Gallery would have been much more believable if they had written the scene so that the artist was sketching/painting in the gallery and the greenhorn from America struck up a conversation with him in her enthusiasm for his work. As it was written the way the artist approached her, and her non-reaction was totally unbelievable.
• I keep waiting for Mrs. Slocombe to make a pussy joke.

  

Today is the last day of the TBR Double Dog Dare hosted by CB James. For the past three months I have limited myself to reading only those books that were already in my possession (on my To Be Read pile) at midnight on December 31, 2012.

Thoughts:

• Despite buying quite a few books during the Dare, I didn’t really have any issues sticking to the challenge. That doesn’t mean, however, that I am not glad it is almost over. I may have held up well over the past three months, but enough is enough. Can’t wait to be a free range reader again.
• Last year just to make it more challenging, I limited myself to the sixty or so books that were in my nightstand. This year I decided to try and focus on those books still remaining on my Century of Books list. I made some really good progess on that front. I now only have twenty-four books on that list to go.
• This year I managed to finish thirty-one books during the dare compared to last year’s sixteen.
• The thing I like most about this challenge is that it always manages to surprise me. I always end up discovering some real gems in my TBR pile.
• Because I was focusing on my Century of Books list this year, I read fewer books that had been sitting on my shelf for years and years. Most of them had been chosen and purchased only last year when I filled out my ACOB list.

Top three books read during the Dare:
1. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
2. Martin Eden by Jack London
3. Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse

I have a theory as to why there are no women in my top three–something that is quite unusual for me. When I was creating my list of 100 books for the Century of Books challenge I was using various “best of” lists and online resources for books published in certain years. Nor surprisingly those resources, because they focus on the supposed “greats” or best sellers are short of works by women. If the books of Persephone and Virago had been listed by year, I might have had more women on my list. I did include some from those publishers, but they were limited to those I already owned and could easily check out the year they were published.  I also decided not to include any of the three Barbara Pym books I re-read during the Dare. Those could have easily filled the top spots.

Bottom three books read during the Dare:
28. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
29. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
30. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

In order to come up with the bottom three I asked myself which books would I be least likely to want to read again. In the right mood I could see myself re-reading Zuleika Dobson, but  only in comparison to the two that I liked even less. Although I ultimately found Catch-22 tedious, I can appreciate its merits and would prefer it to the tedium of the Childers.

Other books I have finished recently (in one sentence)

Crampton Hodnet, Jane and Prudence, and A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym
Loved re-reading these three gems in preparation for the Barbara Pym Society Conference.

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman
I am beginning to think that Lipman’s wonderful The Inn at Lake Devine does not make up for the rest of her rather boring, albeit kind of fun, novels.

Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
Way too whimsical tale of a pretty woman who casts a spell over the undergradates at Oxford.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Although still impressed with Atwood’s skill at drawing me in and recognizing the merits of this book, I was glad when this re-read was over.

Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather
Cather can do no wrong and this tale of slavery and family in the hills of western Virginia is a delight to read.

Love in a  Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
I far preferred The Pursuit of Love, the prequel to this one.

Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett
In the right mood I could appreciate the mini-series like quality of this tale of the life in the pottery towns of northern England.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Parts of this book I found extremely moving and other parts extremely clever, but over all I felt like Atkinson tried to throw in everything and the kitchen sink.

Penrod by Booth Tarkington
I tend to like Tarkington but this episodic tale was like a cross between the Lil’ Rascals, Dennis the Menace and Leave it to Beaver.

It is a little disappointing how few of these books I actually enjoyed. I must be in a bit of a funk. Several of them I know I would have enjoyed more if I had been in a different mood.

  
I was a little bored this weekend yet couldn’t be enticed to do much of anything. I did get a lot of reading done, but something was missing. At one point I realized what the problem was and said to John “I miss my Pym friends”. It was so much fun being around 99 other like minded readers. An interesting conversation could be had with anyone in the room. And everyone was so friendly.

And on top of all the great Pym time, my weekend in Boston was chock-a-block with other fun stuff. Perhaps the most fun of all was meeting, for the very first time, a pen pal I have had for 28 years. We started writing in high school, kept that up for about seven years, lost touch at some point, and were “reunited” by Facebook a year or two ago. But through all of that we had never actually met. We used to talk on the phone in college when one of us could afford the long distance charges. But other than that, we were friends who had never met–at least until now. It was a lot of fun catching up with him and there was, at least from my perspective,  not an awkward moment. We both had a lot of blanks to fill in, but it wasn’t by any means just a walk down memory lane. We had plenty of things to chat about. As I am not much a fan of Dickens we didn’t talk about his current read (Nicholas Nickleby, I think), but I did give him a copy of Some Tame Gazelle. I felt it only proper to proselytize about Barbara Pym.

While in Boston I also went to Brattle Book Shop. Which was a lot of fun, but I actually ended up buying nothing. I should have checked my coat at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum because I was a bit hot and perhaps didn’t take as much time in that amazing building as I would have otherwise. The Museum of Fine Arts was amazing and could have kept me busy all weekend. Unfortunately, two of the more interesting temporary exhibits (New Blue and White and Mario Testino Royal Portraits) not only didn’t allow photography, but they had no catalogs or even any postcards.

I thought for sure that the outdoor sales floor wouldn’t be open in such cold weather. I was wrong.

Have you ever been to a secondhand book shop where the books are double up on the shelf making it really hard to see what is there. At Brattle they have this double shelf system where the back row is about four inches higher than the front row making it very easy to see everything.

Sculpture over the parking lot entrance at the Museum of Fine Arts Walking Man, 2000 Jonathan Borofsky

Beautiful Dale Chihuly scupture at MFA.

This could be called a self portrait of me. But it isn’t. This is a giant cube with a similar view on each side. Endlessly Repeating Twentieth-Century Modernism, 2007 Josiah McElheny The colorful painting reflected in the glass is a Gerhard Richter. One of my favorite living painters.

Detail of Endlessly Repeating Twentieth-Century Modernism, 2007 Josiah McElheny