WAYWT: Excerpts from books edition

[germinal]

A long one to start us off:

Behind him trots George Cavendish, the cardinal's gentleman usher; his face is raw and open with dismay. They bring out the cardinal's vestments, his copes. Stiff with embroidery, strewn with pearls, encrusted with gemstones, they seem to stand by themselves. The raiders knock down each one as if they are knocking down Thomas Becket. They itemise it, and having reduced it to its knees and broken its spine, they toss it into their travelling crates. Cavendish flinches: 'For God's sake, gentlemen, line those chests with double thickness of cambric. Would you shred the fine work that has taken nuns a lifetime?' He turns : 'Master Cromwell, do you think we can get these people out before dark?'
'Only if we help them. If it's got to be done, we can make sure they do it properly.'
This is an indecent spectacle: the man who has ruled England, reduced. They have brought out bolts of fine holland, velvets and grosgrain, sarcenet and taffeta, scarlet by the yard: the scarlet silk in which he braves the summer heat of London, the crimson brocades that keep his blood warm when snow falls on Westminster and whisks in sleety eddies over the Thames. In public the cardinal wears red, just red, but in various weights, various weaves, various degrees of pigment and dye, but all of them the best of their kind, the bests reds to be got for money. There have been days when, swaggering out, he would say, 'Right, Master Cromwell, price me by the yard!'
And he would say, 'Let me see,' and walk slowly around the cardinal; and saying 'May I?' he would pinch a sleeve between an expert forefinger and thumb; and standing back, he would view him, to estimate his girth - year on year, the cardinal expands - and so come up with a figure. The cardinal would clap his hands, delighted. 'Let the begrudgers behold us! On, on, on.' His procession would form up, his silver crosses, his sergeants-at-arms with their axes of gilt: for the cardinal went nowhere, in public, without a procession.

[iwtt]

The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of.

[prairial]

A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps on the toes of his galoshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a cold fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.

He tries to move the chair, using the gaff as before. Enter Clov, dressed for the road. Panama hat, tweed coat, raincoat over his arm, umbrella, bag. He halts by the door and stands there, impassive and motionless, his eyes fixed on Hamm, till the end.

[Lorcan]

Doc had got himself up today in an Edwardian jacket and bell-bottoms in not quite matching and no longer fashionable shades of brown, narrowly trimmed late-movie mustache, hair Brylcreemed into a high pompadour with long sideburns, all meant to suggest a sleazy and vaguely anxious go-between who couldn't himself begin to afford the fees this place would be asking. From the looks he was getting, the put-together seemed to be working.

[rjbman]

Zero History - William Gibson

"Call him," he repeated, wrapped in Japanese herringbone Gore-Tex, multiply flapped and counterintuitively buckled.

[rublev]

He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice.

[windowflowers]

He was slim but firmly built, his clothes were black and close-fitting, with many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all of which gave the impression of being very practical but without making it very clear what they were actually for.

[germinal]

At this moment with the chilly, echoing building just beginning to stir, a worried-looking clerical individual with nearly opaque glasses and wearing a tabby-fur blazer and pointed yellow shoes waited at the reception counter a claim-check stub in his hand.

A tall, elderly man, with large hands and a quick, sprightly stride, came toward him. He wore a varicolored Dacron wash-and-wear suit, knit cummerbund and dip-dyed cheesecloth cravat.

Still in gay pinstripe clown-style pajamas, Joe Chip hazily seated himself at his kitchen table, flaxy a cigarette and, after inserting a dime, twiddled the dial of his recently rented 'pape machine.

After he had dressed - in a sporty marroon wrapper, twinkle-toes turned-up shoes and a felt cap with a tassel - he poked about hopefully in the kitchen for some manifestation of coffee. None.

She wore an ersatz canvas work-shirt and jeans, heavy boots caked with what appeared to be authentic mud. Her tangle of shiny hair was tied back and knotted with a red bandanna. Her rolled-up sleeves showed tanned, competent arms. At her imitation leather belt she carried a knife, a field-telephone unit and an emergency pack of rations and water. On her bare, dark forearm he made out a tattoo, CAVEAT EMPTOR, it read. He wondered what that meant.
'This is Pat,' G. G. Ashwood said, his arm, with ostentatious familiarity, around the girl's waist. 'Never mind her last name.' Square and puffy, like an overweight brick, wearing his usual mohair poncho, apricot-colored felt hat, argyle ski socks and carpet slippers, he advanced toward Joe Chip, self-satisfaction smirking from every molecule in his body; he had found something of value here, and he meant to make the most of it.

Do you recall this one Mr. Runciter? It shows a husband home from his job at the end of the day; he still has on his electric-yellow cummerbund, petal skirt, knee-hugging hose and military-style visored cap. He seats himself wearily on the living-room couch, starts to take off one of his gauntlets.

[Cowboy]

Building on the Farmers’ Alliance network of local institutions, the Populists embarked on a remarkable effort of community organization and education. To spread their message they published numerous pamphlets on political and economic questions, established more than 1,000 local newspapers, and sent traveling speakers throughout rural America. Wearing “a huge black sombrero and a black Prince Albert coat,” Texas Populist orator “Cyclone” Davis traveled the Great Plains accompanied by the writings of Thomas Jefferson, which he quoted to demonstrate the evils of banks and large corporations. At great gatherings on the western plains, similar in some ways to religious revival meetings, and in small- town southern country stores, one observer wrote, “people commenced to think who had never thought before, and people talked who had seldom spoken. . . . Little by little they commenced to theorize upon their condition.”

[bleeker]

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher — shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue.

[deadkitty]

I lay back as she concentrated on the eye-piece of her machine. Her left breast rose inside the jacket of her white coat, the chest wall swelling below the collar bone. Somewhere within that complex of nylon and starched cotton lay a large inert nipple, its pink face crushed by the scented fabrics.

[rjbman]

He wore maroon paratrooper's pants with green stovepipe stripes down the sides. The pants' cuffs were tucked into fuchsia socks above ancient and radically uncool Clark's Wallabies with dirty soles of eraserish gum. He wore an orange fake-silk turtleneck under an English-cut sportcoat in a purple-and-tan windowpane check. He wore naval shoulder-braid at the level of ensign. He wore his yachting cap, but with the bill bent up at a bumpkinish angle.

[yoyobeat]

The pair were oddly contrasted: the American very neat in his black coat and pepper-and-salt trousers, thin and dried-up, with something of ecclesiastical unction already in his manner; and the Englishman in his loose tweed suit, large-limbed and slow of gesture.

He wore a Norfolk jacket of bold pattern, a blue stock round his neck, and a tweed cap of f a n t a s t i c shape.

"Philip laughed savagely as he thought of her gentility and the refinement with which she ate her food; she could not bear a coarse word, so far as her limited vocabulary reached she had a passion for euphemisms, and she scented indecency everywhere; she never spoke of trousers but referred to them as nether garments"...

All from Of Human Bondage by Maugham (1915). Love 'nether garments'.

[Cowboy]

The man's clothes were new—all of them, cheap and new. His gray cap was so new
that the visor was still stiff and the button still on, not shapeless and bulged as it would
be when it had served for a while all the various purposes of a cap—carrying sack,
towel, handkerchief. His suit was of cheap gray hardcloth and so new that there were
creases in the trousers. His blue chambray shirt was stiff and smooth with filler. The
coat was too big, the trousers too short, for he was a tall man. The coat shoulder peaks
hung down on his arms, and even then the sleeves were too short and the front of the
coat flapped loosely over his stomach. He wore a pair of new tan shoes of the kind
called "army last," hob-nailed and with half-circles like horseshoes to protect the edges
of the heels from wear. This man sat on the running board and took off his cap and
mopped his face with it. Then he put on the cap, and by pulling started the future ruin
of the visor. His feet caught his attention. He leaned down and loosened the shoelaces,
and did not tie the ends again. Over his head the exhaust of the Diesel engine
whispered in quick puffs of blue smoke.

[iralanwitnuk]

He was dressed in neat black broadcloth, cuffless trouser-legs crumpling over his boots, the coat full-skirted with wide lapels, a satin waistcoat framing the stiff white bosom of his shirt, a black silk handkerchief wound stockwise twice around the upturned collar and knotted loosely at the throat. Close-shaven except for the tuft of beard at the jut of the chin, the face was built economically close to the skull, and more than anything it expressed an iron control by the brain within that skull.

[ballast]

Ralph was pouring champagne. He turned, holding the two glasses, and DL noticed changes in his packaging. His suit fit like Cary Grant's, he appeared to have shaved sometime in the last hour, and he was wearing a pink tropical blossom in his lapel. He still smelled, however, like the far end of a men's toiletries section in a drugstore, and his haircut had been performed by someone who must have been trying to give up smoking.

[bels]

Seeing as I have neuromancer open:

He looked up, met gray eyes ringed with paintstick. She was wearing faded French orbital fatigues and new white sneakers.

She wore mirrored glasses. Her clothes were black, the heels of black boots deep in the temperfoam.
...
She wore tight black glove leather jeans and a bulky black jacket cut from some matte fabric that seemed to absorb light.
...
She took off her black jacket, the fletcher hung beneath her arm in a black nylon shoulder rig. She wore a sleeveless gray pullover with plain steel zips across each shoulder. Bulletproof, Case decided, slopping coffee into a bright vermilion mug.

Armitage was no taller than Case, but with his broad shoulders and military posture he seemed to fill the doorway. He wore a somber Italian suit; in his right hand he held a briefcase of soft black calf. The Special Forces earring was gone. The handsome, inexpressive features offered the routine beauty of the cosmetic boutiques, a conservative amalgam of the past decade's leading media faces. The pale glitter of his eyes heightened the effect of a mask. Case began to regret the question.

Aside from the huge pair of sunglasses concealing her mirrored insets, she managed to look remarkably like she belonged there, another tourist girl hoping for a glimpse of Tally Isham. She wore a pink plastic raincoat, a white mesh top, loose white pants cut in a style that had been fashionable in Tokyo the previous year. She grinned vacantly and popped her gum. Case felt like laughing.

The Panther Modern leader, who introduced himself as Lupus Yonderboy, wore a polycarbon suit with a recording feature that allowed him to replay backgrounds at will. Perched on the edge of Case's worktable like some kind of state of the art gargoyle, he regarded Case and Armitage with hooded eyes. He smiled. His hair was pink. A rainbow forest of microsofts bristled behind his left ear; the ear was pointed, tufted with more pink hair. His pupils had been modified to catch the light like a cat's. Case watched the suit crawl with color and texture.

The recoil nearly broke his wrist. The muzzle-flash flaxy the office like a flashbulb. With his ears ringing, he stared at the jagged hole in the front of the desk. Explosive bullet. Azide. He raised the gun again.
"You needn't do that, old son," Julie said, stepping out of the shadows. He wore a three-piece drape suit in silk herringbone, a striped shirt, and a bow tie. His glasses winked in the light.

The Zionite was wearing a blue Sanyo vacuum suit twenty years older than the one Case had rented in Freeside, its helmet under his arm and his dreadlocks bagged in a net cap crocheted from purple cotton yarn. His eyes were slitted with ganja and tension.

The gangway had snaked its way around Haniwa; it was horizontal , where it joined Garvey' s lock, but curved up sharply and to the left, a vertical climb around the curvature of the yacht's hull. Maelcum was already making his way up the rings, pulling himself up with his left hand, the Remington in his right. He wore a stained pair of baggy fatigues, his sleeveless green nylon jacket, and a pair of ragged canvas sneakers with bright vermilion soles. The gangway shifted slightly, each time he climbed to another ring.

"The artery is intact," the ninja said. Case remembered Molly's description of the man who'd killed her lover. Hideo was another. Ageless, he radiated a sense of quiet, an utter calm. He wore clean, frayed khaki workpants and soft dark shoes that fit his feet like gloves, split at the toes like tabi socks. The bamboo bow was a museum piece, but the black alloy quiver that protruded above his left shoulder had the look of the best Chiba weapons shops. His brown chest was bare and smooth.

[oucho]

'What's that smell?' It was Hilary, her Royal Horticultural Society apron still on, a hydrangea petiolaris working its way up her front.

[Lorcan]

non-fiction edition from Edward Burra: 20th Century Eye, Jane Stephenson's biography of the English artist (and compulsive writer of amusing but badly spelled letters).

Burra had an educated eye for clothes; his drawings and paintings not only chronicle passing fashion, but use clothes to offer subtle clues to the wearer's identity. He enjoyed describing [his sister] Anne's posh friends' dowdily expensive fashion disasters, especially to Bar [the photographer Barbara Ker-Seymour] to whom he reported with dark glee on one unfortunate girl's evening frocks (with drawings): 'this evening she has on her dinkie cyclamen "crepe tomato" with boat shaped neck and around the bottom roses a la poached egs to tone yesterday we had on our black crepe noir carried out with daring decolete censured with pastel gauze embroidered with peagreen ribbon a la serpent'.

[Iliam]

Baudelaire’s own dandiacal tendencies ran to the wearing of rose-coloured gloves – alone, this accessory detail was simply very stylish for a young man of the time, but Baudelaire, according to his friend the photographer Nadar, was to be seen strolling in his neighbourhood wearing his rose gloves with a blue workman’s smock, a blood red cravat and a magenta chenille boa, of the sort that the minor actresses of the city apparently affected.

- Lisa Robertson, “Proverbs of a She-Dandy", 2017