John Berger's "Selected Essays"

I'd say a month or so ago I had no idea who John Berger was. I still have only an aqueous impression. I discovered him googling around re the Booker Prize.

Decided to start with his Selected Essays: John Berger (edited by Geoff Dyer) . Started reading only yesterday.

*

From the very first essay "Drawing" (1953):
     I looked at my drawing trying to see what had been distorted; which lines or scribbles of tones had lost their original and necessary emphasis, as others had surrounded them; which spontaneous gestures had evaded a problem, and which had been instinctively right. Yet even this process was only partly conscious. In some places I could clearly see that a passage was clumsy and needed checking; in others, I allowed my pencil to hover around -- rather like the stick of a water-diviner. One form would pull, forcing the pencil to make a scribble of tone which could re-emphasize its recession; another would jab the pencil into restressing a line which could bring it further forward.

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