Rambling off the subject: He's describing Goya's travels to another town in some sort of cart and then goes into great detail about the cart.
Plugging in random information that has no rhyme or reason to be in the book. Here he is describing Goya's wife Josefa:
"She resented it but there was no escape. Year after year she did what was expected. She seems to have felt passionately about nothing except clothes. When I was a child our family employed a housekeeper like Josefa: a placid, expressionless, devout, overweight farm girl. Not once did I see her angry, excited, depressed, or amused. Day after day, month after month, heavy on her feet, she cleaned house, prepared meals. Sunday morning she dressed up to attend church. Wednesday night she attended Bible class. Life being what it was, she
acquiesced."
I think this is my favourite rambling so far. He is describing a painting Goya did of Don Luis de Bourbon, brother of the King of Spain. The Spanish Bourbons were well know for their large noses.
"He looks dazed, befuddled, glassy-eyed. He resembles George Washington except for the nose, the grotesque Bourbon nose, swollen, possibly discolored by too many goblets of wine. Americans call this a whisky nose and since he was Don Luis de Bourbon they wonder if there might be a connection. No. That whiskey is distilled from corn, which Europeans regard as inappropriate for anything except pig feed, and takes it name from a county in Kentucky where it was first produced."
Huh? What in the world does Kentucky Bourbon have to do with Spanish royalty?
But the best, is he throws out rumours or summations and then says "We will get back to that." I guess that's what I get for buying a discount book.
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