Private life by Jane Smiley

Author:Jane Smiley [Jane Smiley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Roman
ISBN: 9780307593788
Published: 2010-09-15T10:13:42+00:00

AFTER all, he chose deep (“navy”) blue embossed covers with a silver title (The Universe Explained, by Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, Ph.D., United States Navy). The frontispiece was a picture of Andrew taken some years before, when his hair and his mustache were still dark. As Margaret held it in her hands, it seemed to her that it had arisen quite suddenly, popping into her presence as if from another world. The paper was glossy and the front edge gilded. The typeface, which Andrew chose on his own, was surprisingly appealing—upright and uncompromising, but friendly, just the way Andrew fancied himself to be. The pages of text were interspersed with ink drawings that Andrew had made. He had an elegant hand, as when he drew the impact craters from the shotgun experiment he had done with Hubert Lear. The endpapers were especially rich—swirls of blue and yellow that reminded her of the sky.

A thousand copies were printed. Andrew rented a room to store them, and paid a young man to send them out to every astronomical journal, geological journal, and physics journal in the world, also to twenty-five or so newspapers, from the Times of London to the Sacramento Bee. They were also sent to heads of observatories, and one, of course, to Mr. Akenbourn, in South Africa. One was sent, with Andrew’s compliments, to Oliver Lodge in England, another to Professor Russell at Princeton, another to Lord Rutherford at the University of Manchester. He sent them only to English speakers, and he sent these volumes as gifts, not as supplications. The rest he expected to sell to interested parties.

And that is that, thought Margaret with relief. He had gotten it off his chest.

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