Friedrich --

Thanks for tipping me off to John Currin. I enjoyed the interview with him that you linked to. I notice that at one point he says:

I like things to be still, I'm interested in a still image...There's a pleasure in freezing movement, a voyeuristic pleasure in being able to see one moment and look at it forever.

So true. Have you ever read Nicolson Baker's "The Fermata"? On the same theme: the hero can stop time.

Baker: Time-stopper

The only thing, it turns out, that Baker's hero can think of to do with the stopped time is to walk around undressing and feeling up women. A wonderful creepy/sexy/funny novel, the only Nicholson Baker book where I felt the obsessiveness and virtuosity got in synch and paid off. Plus some amazingly specific (and bizarrely convincing) descriptions of what time, when stopped, feels like.

I wonder how John Currin and Nicholson Baker would get on.

Best,

Michael