Topical Guide 311
Mark Dorset
Books: Seafood and Sex
Garth provided the solution. One day, when Herb was between trips, Garth asked him to meet him after work. They drove to the rattiest section of the ratty wharf area of Babbington.
In Seafood and Sex, his study of life in “a small coastal town somewhere in America,” T. Wallaston (Stretch) Mitgang, the pioneering psychohistoricosociologist, wrote:The waterfront area — that is, the area near the working waterfront, the poorest area of town, the messiest, the rattiest — is its true social frontier, a miniature of the social frontier of American society at large.
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 9
Secrecy: Concealment, Camouflage
Secrecy: Secret Societies
Secrecy: Code Words, Passwords, Signs and signals
Garth took Herb to a place that Herb had heard of but never visited before: Corinne’s. There were two parts to Corinne’s. In plain sight, almost at the end of Lower (that’s Lower Bolotomy Road, remember), was a fish house with the name Corinne’s on a painted sign that ran along the ridge of the roof, and behind the fish house, concealed in a warehouse, was the other Corinne’s, the one sometimes referred to in speech as Corinne’s Warehouse, a name delivered with a wink, a raised eyebrow, and a sly elongation of the first syllable of the second word. This was the speakeasy and whorehouse. …
Garth stopped and stood perfectly still for a moment, listening. Satisfied that there were no following footsteps, he pushed the side of a large crate, and it swung inward. Garth motioned Herb into the cabinet he had revealed, and then followed Herb inside and pulled the door closed behind them. From his pocket he took a small silver penknife engraved with his initials, and he pushed it through a knothole on the opposite side of the crate. In a moment, that side of the crate swung open, and a small, bent old man in a brown suit welcomed Garth and Herb. As they passed him, Garth held out his hand, and the old man dropped Garth’s penknife into it.Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 9
“Just knock three times and whisper low that you and I were sent by Joe.”
Sex: Houses of Prostitution: Corinne’s
Currently reading in bed: Deyan Sudjic’s B Is for Bauhaus, Y Is for YouTube.
For a designer, authenticity has taken on a paradoxical aspect. An authentic design might be understood as a design which is more than merely not a fake. It is also an object which is unselfconscious, one which is not shaped by a desire to please or to seduce. This is a quality which depends on responding with a certain sincerity to the practical questions that are raised by providing a serviceable solution to a technical problem. Yet design is a highly self-conscious business, one that can barely help itself but attempt to manipulate the emotions. The very involvement of a designer in the creation of an object militates against this kind of authenticity. Design cannot but have the most knowing of views of the world. Even to acknowledge that a designer is pursuing the quality of authenticity is to undermine that objective. Striving for authenticity signals its antithesis.
[more to come on Monday, August 8, 2022]
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