A gold book, fastened together in the shape of a book by wires of the same metal, had been dug up in the northern part of the state of New York, and along with the book an enormous pair of gold spectacles!
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A book store is a treasure chest. Every time you walk in one, you strike gold.
Researching and writing about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98 was one of the most exciting and involving projects I've undertaken.
I have asked the village blacksmith to forge golden chains to tie our ankles together. I have gathered all the gay ribbons in the world to wind around and around and around and around and around and around again around our two waists.
In history books, or the one about the guy who cut his hand off to get out of a canyon in Utah, you really want them to be accurate. But my stuff is such small beer by comparison.
Living in Manhattan opened me to whole new sets of things to envy, study, gather and imagine stealing. A full-size 1809 German harp, beautifully painted with three goddesses, covered in a pea-green coat of great silvery refinement: mine for $180. Though all its strings were broken, its beauty let it claim a quarter of my one - bedroom.
The construction of extensive railways, however, and particularly the consolidation of small, experimental lines into large systems, dates from the days of the discovery of gold in California.
I wasn't an academic looking in books for ideas. But I educated myself about historical work that was similar to mine, to provide a frame of reference that wasn't the usual frame of reference of the New York art world and Europe.
Books come from within.
My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather.
I've been told there's a special golden shelf, in the secret vault kept at the back of every bookstore in America, that contains the Bible, 'War and Peace,' and 'Driving Mr. Albert.'