Marianne Faithfull's new album is entitled 'Negative Capability'. On the back of the cover is a photo containing the following books.
Oscar Wilde / Оскар Уайльд [that's OW in Russian - there's no title otherwise]
Vladimir Nabokov -
Letters to Vera [his wife]
Chet Filippo -
Hank Williams, Your Cheatin' Heart
Frances Yates -
The Art of Memory (I'm especially impressed by this - I once read a book by Frances Yates called
The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, and was dead proud to have done so).
Henrietta -
Henrietta [I need help with this one]
Peter Siskind -
Easy Riders
Barry Miles - title unshown, but could (might well) be
In the Sixties
Sleeping Beauty and other Fairy Tales
Unidentifiable volume
The Complete Pelican Shakespeare
The phrase 'negative capability' was coined by Keats to describe Shakespeare's ability to render truth beyond the reach of mere fact or reason.
In the gatefold:
Howard Jacobson's
Kalooki Nights and A. N. Wilson's
After the Victorians (both authors, it so happens, with whom I have had conversations). I have not, however, met Andrea di Robillant, the author of
Lucia in the Age of Napoleon. Other titles are generally indecipherable, although there is one called 'Happenings', which is probably about, you know, 'happenings', those occasions that take place in art galleries where nude persons cover themselves in paint or blood or feathers and roll around making marks, remarks or merely spectacles of themselves.
