The minor godlet reports that college work has started with a look at American writer Martha Grimes. Within her novella The Train Now Departing is reference to the lines by Wallace Stevens:
Beauty is momentary in the mind -
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
which seem complete by themselves but are part of the exquisitely beautiful Peter Quince at the Clavier.
Wallace Stevens was apparently on dining terms with Robert Frost, and had the distinction of breaking his hand against Ernest Hemingway's jaw in an attempt to box with him.
Stevens' words about beauty bring to mind The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. The eponymous line being both the sinuous curve of the ogee, and a reference to the 1980s restorative of choice.
The book is an examination of the wild excesses of the 1980s in the UK; was 2004 Booker prize winner; adapted as a BBC television series three or four years back and probably merits a place as an EngLit classic. It is a book full of life and love, (gay) sex and drugs, and the sadness of watching the person you love die inch by painful inch in front of you.
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