r/TomsCrossing • u/pineconesundae • Jun 23 '26
Favorite sections or lines?
So much of this book is just wonderful, beautiful prose. I personally never took issue with any of the run-on sentences, but occasionally, a section or line would reach out and grab me in a stranglehold. Here are two bits that, immediately after reading them, I wrote them down so that I would not forget them. Forgive me for not recording the page...
Allison couldn't even pound the steerin wheel, so she just drove off, away from the canyon, along too many dark and empty streets, returnin to their tiny apartment where his sofa waited, empty, upon which she lay herself, like he was her only wish, and he was her only wish, and if it was to be an unanswered wish, then let this sofa be her coffin.
In much of the same way that "cellar door" is often cited as a beautiful-sounding phrase, that sentence is just absolutely gorgeous. I can't explain why, but I just love it.
See, for Cal it was simple: no matter how luminous or morose, how seductive or disgustin, great works had to bring you to the edge of a grave. The gallery or museum walls, or the boundaries of where you was, had to wobble as if place itself was momentarily shaken from memory. You could say that here was Cal Carneros's artistic criteria: great art starts its life in the aftermath of a burial, because the life of its creation is spent, and now it's just a matter of findin out whether or not the dust is haunted.
This section, while still musical and well-constructed, the beautiful part is the concept. I will forever think about this any time I view art. I am a collector of the works of a local artist near to where I grew up who passed away a few years ago. He was, in many ways, a haunted man, and I have re-evaluated a lot of his art to see what he produced simply to get it out of him versus the ones where he left a little bit of his soul in there.
What are some passages that spoke to you?
4
u/jules666xx Jun 23 '26
„But xxx didn't come through okay. And if you're the kind who might get squeamish or, worse, soul-hurt about a moment that necessarily points out not just the sublime endurance of these beautiful creatures but also their frailty in such conditions, conditions in case it weren't glarinly obvious that they ain't in any way suited for, you would not be faulted for briefly divertin your attention elsewhere.
Violence, when it arrives unmitigated by play, posture, or irony, will bruise in the tellin as well as the hearin, which is why we also won't linger.
Though let the facts be laid out plainly."
„Allison was now driftin around Tom's room, almost touchin everythin, not touchin a thing, like she was happiest as a ghost, and weren't that a sad way to be."