Mel Bochner: (Laughs) I’ll tell you my Borges story. Dore [Ashton] invited him to give a talk at the School of Visual Arts in 1966, or ‘67, and every hip artist in New York was in the audience. Everyone was expecting to hear him talk about his own work, but instead, he delivered a talk on an obscure topic in Old Norse literature. It was so erudite that no one there had a clue what he was talking about. It was clearly deliberate on his part and a great piece of Surrealist theater. Anyway, there was a reception for him afterwards to which I was invited. As I was sitting in the living room he sat down on the sofa right next to me. I thought, here I am sitting next to Borges, this is probably the only chance I’ll ever have to meet him, I have to try to engage him in a conversation. Across the room from us was sitting a man who looked exactly like Claude Rains, the old English actor. Desperate to think of something, anything, to say, I turned to Borges and said, “That man over there looks very much like Claude Rains.” Borges replied disinterestedly, “Oh, really.” I forged ahead anyway, “It’s interesting because Claude Rains became a famous movie actor without ever having been seen, because the first movie he starred in was H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man.” To which Borges responded, “Hmm.” But I was in too deep to turn around, so I continued, “Well, I know how much you admire H.G. Wells.” “No, I don’t,” he replied. Confused by his response, I said, “But I’ve read your writings on Wells, and I remember how much you admired Wells’ great short story “In the Valley of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King.” To which he replied, “Wells was a failure.” Totally baffled, I asked, “Why?” “For one example,” he said, “in the novel The Time Machine, the time machine is such a clumsy metaphor. It would have been so much more elegant if it had been a magic ring. If he had rubbed a magic ring and been transported through time.” “But,” I anwered, “a magic ring doesn’t make any sense in the context of a parable about the politics of technology.” “Oh no, a magic ring would have been much better,” Borges said, and with that he stood up and walked away.

Rail: So he got annoyed.

Bochner: I have no idea what it was about, because early on he had written so brilliantly, and so positively, about Wells. But the mystery, and what I still don’t understand to this day, was how he was able to just stand up and walk away, because, as you know, he was totally blind.

(From an interview with Mel Bochner by Phong Bui in the Brooklyn Rail.)

“Having looked at them without talking to them, he took his eyes away but he directed them to the one who rushed out from my skull in the form of thick grey smoke and sat one one of the chairs. then he said loudly: ‘Yes, Mr “Memory”, what are your accusations against Mr First “Mind”?’ Then when the thick grey figure which was my ‘memory’ stood up, he first bowed for the deceptive judge which was my ‘kidney’ and he explained to him with a sad voice: ‘Yes, Judge “Kidney”, my accusations against Mr First “Mind” are that when we were with our Possessor,’ my ‘memory’ called me their possessor, ‘as his partners and advisers, while he went and returned safely on his two dangerous journeys, Mr First “Mind” misled our Possessor several times, which nearly ran our Possessor to death. But if I were not with him, and also Mr Second “Mind”, our Possessor would have perished in the wild jungles or when he and his wife were sacrificed to the god of the river. So for this reason, Mr First “Mind” must be severely punished even to death!’ Thus Mr ‘Memory’ explained to the deceptive Judge ‘Kidney’ and then he bowed and sat back.”

(Amos Tutuola, The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town (1981), p. 199)

“It was in the early 1950s that Picasso’s earning power and wealth became fabulous to this degree. The decisions which so radically affected his status were taken by men who had nothing to do with Picasso. The American government passed a law which allowed income tax relief to any citizen giving a work of art to an American museum: the relief was immediate, but the work of art did not have to go to the museum until the owner’s death. The purpose of this measure was to encourage the import of European works of art. (There is still the residue of the magical belief that to own art confirms power.) In England the law was changed – in order to discourage the export of art – so that it became possible to pay death duties with works of art instead of money. Both pieces of legislation increased prices in salerooms throughout the art work.”

(John Berger, The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965), p. 4)

“So the notion of a book needs defining. The concept employed here is simply this: a book is something that unfolds itself. It is always offering portions of its self, withdrawing others, suggesting still others. Emerging, present, receding: there is how a book is. It is a manufactured thing. It works in certain ways; it cannot work in others. It has pages. There is the embarrassingly primitive essence of it.

We do not do nearly enough with what we have invented. Our sense of event, of plot, ought to be keyed to that, to the simple fact that a book is a thing of pages, and to the fact that a page will turn.

The turning of a page is an aesthetic event; or at any rate, it should be. Anyone who writes will know how oddly crucial it can be that a certain page end with a certain word, that the next one begin with a certain other.”

(Eugene Wildman, afterward to Anthology of Concretism (1969), pp. 161–162)

    1. Of a plant: Entwined with a climbing plant.

    2. Of shoes, etc.: Made to be fastened or tightened with laces.

    3. Ornamented or trimmed with lace:    a. with edgings, trimmings, or lappets of lace.    b. with braids or cords of gold or silver lace.

    4. Diversified with streaks of colour. Of birds: Having on the edge of the feathers a colour different from that of the general surface. Of a flower: Marked with streaks of colour.

    5. laced mutton (slang): a strumpet. Obs.
  Mutton was used alone in the same sense. The adj. may mean ‘wearing a bodice’, possibly with a pun on the culinary sense LACE v. 8, though the latter is not recorded so early.

    6. Of a beverage: Mixed with a small quantity of spirits. (But see quot. a1700; also 1687 in LACE v. 9.)

1677 WYCHERLEY Pl. Dealer III. i, Prithee, captain, let’s go drink a dish of laced coffee, and talk of the times. a1700 B. E. Dict. Cant. Crew, Lac’d Coffee, Sugar’d. 1712 ADDISON Spect. No. 317 39 Mr. Nisby of opinion that laced Coffee is bad for the Head. 1819 Anderson’s Cumberld. Ball. 108 Set on kettle, Let aw teake six cups o’ leac’d tea. 1886 Illustr. Lond. News Summer No. 14/2 He took a sip at his laced coffee.

    7. Of the spokes of a bicycle: Set so as to cross one another near the hub.

    8. laced stool: ? one made with a cane or rush seat, or one with a cloth seat stretched by cords.

    9. laced valley (Building): a valley between the slopes of two adjoining roofs in which the end tile of each row abuts against a tile-and-a-half tile laid diagonally on the valley board.

    10. Comb., as laced-jacketed, -waistcoated adjs.