Thursday, January 24, 2019

A “spectacular building,”
a “beautiful room”

Yesterday afternoon: “If we can handle Iraq, we can handle the middle of Washington and a very, very spectacular building and a beautiful room that we should be in, and that’s where it’s been for a very long time.”

But last night in a tweet: “there is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House Chamber.”

Is it reasonable to wonder whether someone helped with the name of the beautiful room?

comments: 5

Fresca said...


Reminds me of the title _The Beautiful Room Is Empty_, by Edmund White--not that I've read the book, and I wouldn't even mention it here except it turns out, when I looked it up just now, that EW took his title from a letter Kafka wrote, and the quote does feel relevant to the feeling I have when I think about the Beautiful Room in Washington:

"Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word and immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen.

"He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the beautiful room is empty."

--Franz Kafka in a letter to Milena Jesenská

Do you think Our President was secretly thinking of this when he spoke?

*peals of laughter*

Michael Leddy said...

“Franz Kafka is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”

Michael Leddy said...

I thought of you just now while addressing a letter: I had my John Lennon stamp say, “I don’t believe in Shatner,” à la the long litany in the Lennon song “God.” Because of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

Fresca said...

LOL!!!
Shatner's Lucy is excruciating!

Funny, I just mailed a big box to our mutual blog-friend Crow, and I put an entire sheet of Lennon stamps on it.

Michael Leddy said...

I feel worlds converging here. :)