How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Most of the pieces were abstract, whirls of wire, loops, designs which to some extent the molten metals had taken on their own. Some had a spider-web delicacy, an airiness; others had a massive, powerful, almost barbaric heaviness. (9.10)
Could you draw the Edfrank jewelry? Notice how much more space Dick has to use to describe this jewelry than he has to describe the books here. (He could go in to long descriptions of the awesome cover illustrations for the books, but he doesn't.) Is there something different about non-literature art?
Quote #8
"Yet," Paul said, "I have for several days now inspected it, and for no logical reason I feel a certain emotional fondness. Why is that? I may ask. I do not even now project into this blob, as in psychological German tests, my own psyche. I still see no shapes or forms. But it somehow partakes of Tao. You see?" He motioned Childan over. "It is balanced. The forces within this piece are stabilized. At rest. So to speak, this object has made its peace with the universe. It has separated from it and hence has managed to come to homeostasis." (11.85)
The Edfrank jewelry can't be pictured in this book (unless there were illustrations, which we would kill for), but maybe that's because the important thing is how people react to it. Is the Edfrank jewelry hard to talk about here because we're supposed to pay attention to Paul's almost religious reaction?
Quote #9
Life is short, he thought. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand But no longer. Taking the small box, he put the Edfrank jewelry piece away in his coat pocket. (11.189)
Childan has just had some strange experience with the Edfrank jewelry, where he's come to take a stand against a powerful Japanese official. (Here, Paul.) But this art-related enlightenment doesn't seem to last super-long. Childan has this vision of art stretching out longer than life—but he's still got to about living. Childan may have had a life-changing moment, but it's still just a "small box" by the end of the chapter.