Everything That Rises - A Book Of Convergences

While I'm on the subject of McSweeney's, I have to mention my favorite new book. Lawrence Weschler is the author of 'Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder', an amazing book that I'll let you investigate on your own. His newest book concerns itself with the exploration of the "secret affinities" (Magritte) that are evident through the juxtapostion of a series of very well known images. Weschler advances the theory that certain images are hot-wired into our brains and backs it up by providing pairing after pairing, accompanied by brilliantly written text. Here's an example:

A night time photograph of rescue workers in the smoking bowels of the ruins of the World Trade Center is juxtaposed with Rembrandt's similarly lit 1642 painting of soldiers, The Night Watch.
The photographer, Joel Meyerowitz, says of the scene: "The quality of the glowing light in the center, the assembled men, the kind of smoky background, all the hardware of destruction of it gave me the feeling of those lances and curtains and all that heraldry (painted by Rembrandt). It was a gut reaction. Although I couldn't call up the painting exactly, I just knew this grand assemblage was a powerful image."