The Fascination of Sacrifice

Another good read: David Shenk's "The Immortal Game". Recommended to me about three years back, but I only sunk my teeth into it a week or two ago. As Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kierseritsky's titular duel unfolds in a brilliant example of tactical duplicity, Shenk overlaps a lyrical exposition of the game's history and the many myths and legends that surrounds its origins.


One such story revolves around two sixth century Indian kings. The first ordered his sage to invent a game that reflected his belief in the power of fate and this produced the rolling of dice. The second, however, ordered his sage to invent one that represented his conviction in the power of knowledge and free will, and this ultimately led to chess.

Now Comes Days Of Begging, Days Of Theft

My current read. I know it's in vogue to jump on the McCarthy bandwagon but "Blood Meridian" has been on my to-do list for a long while. I thought "The Road" was depressing but this is probably the bleakest thing that's ever seared itself onto my brain -- in the most fascinating way possible, of course.


McCarthy's always a tough read and he makes the matter infinitely more complicated in this instance with untranslated pasages of Spanish and a complete lack of quotation marks. But I love the sparseness of his writing style and the way all that unspoken description bleeds into your head.

"He works in a sawmill, he works in a diptheria pesthouse. He takes as pay from a farmer an aged mule and aback the animal in the spring of the year eighteen and forty-nine he rides up through the latterday republic of Fredonia into the town of Nacogdoches."

Sgt. James

Here's a ballpoint sketch I did in an A5 notebook (to make up for the lazy Live Traced images in the last post). Whenever we had to do a book report in elementary school my teacher made us draw a picture for it, too. Good practice, I guess.