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The most famous preparatory drawing is a sheet that lays out Leonardo’s initial conception for the entire picture (fig. 16). On it he plots his perspective lines, following the methods used by Brunelleschi and Alberti. As the scene recedes to the vanishing point, the horizontal lines, which he drew with a ruler, are compressed with incredible precision, far more than necessary for a finished painting. Combined with this meticulous grid are quick, spectral sketches of twisting and scrambling humans, rearing and frenzied horses, and an ultimate bit of Leonardo fantasia: a resting camel twisting his neck to regard the scene with a wild surmise. Mathematically delineated, precise lines work in concert with frenzied motion and emotion. It is a remarkable combination of optical science and imaginative art, and it shows how he constructed his art on a scaffold of science.25
Leonardo Da Vinci
Walter Isaacson
I took Michelle to dinner in Port Washington and she told me about her husband, Mike Lunden, an energy broker who loved bow ties and cigars and hockey and weddings and Chicago and fine wines—and her. She described their courtship and happy marriage. Though they lived in a studio apartment with a newborn baby, she said, they never once got sick of each other. As Michelle talked I noticed that she was yet another graduate of the Publicans Storytelling Academy. She had me laughing one minute, swallowing a lump in my throat the next. She asked about me. Had I gotten married? I told her I’d come close once or twice, but I’d had some growing up to do first. Also, it had taken me a long time to get over my first love. “Right,” she said. “What ever happened to—?” “Sidney.” I cleared my throat. “She phoned me out of the blue when she heard I was at Harvard. We met for dinner.” “And?” “She was exactly the same.” “And?” “I’d changed.” Sidney had explained, carefully and honestly, her decision not to choose me years before, saying she’d been apprehensive about a young man so enthralled by a bar. I told Michelle I thought Sidney had been right to be apprehensive. After dinner I took Michelle for a nightcap to the site of the old Publicans. We sat in the booth nearest the door and I could see Michelle’s spirits lift, ever so slightly, as good memories drifted back. But her thoughts quickly returned to her husband. He was such a good man, she told me, repeating those words, “a good man,” several times. And he was thrilled about Matthew, she said. Now Matthew would know Mike only through letters and photos and stories. She worried about her son growing up with no father, how that void would define him. “At least he’ll have his uncles,” she said with a sigh. “And his cousins. He’s crazy about his cousins. And in school he’ll know many other children who lost fathers, so he won’t feel—different.” I slumped against the back of the booth. It hadn’t hit me until then. Manhasset, where I’d once felt like the only boy without a father, was now a town full of fatherless children.
The Tender Bar
J.R. Moehringer
Pascal’s shot needed to be totally rebuilt. He was starting it by winding it around from his left side, and that’s probably what he had been doing since he first picked up a ball in Cameroon. A lot of players develop habits when they are not strong enough to get the ball up to the hoop, and those idiosyncrasies follow them right into professional basketball. They have a comfort with their style—an attitude that it’s just the way they shoot—and when they’ve got enough other skills to dominate at lower levels, nobody tries to change them. And many times, they are resistant to change. Pascal did not have that issue. He came into the gym the day that season ended, and I remember him saying to me, “I need to learn how to shoot.” I went over to a basket with him and gave him a marked-up ball. I had put a stripe on it so he could square himself up correctly. It was like I was running shooting camps again, and we were working with the Nurse’s Pill, or a version of it. I said, “Here’s your workout: Take 150 of these shots from three feet, with this new way I’m showing you. Take a hundred free throws, a hundred corner three-pointers, and a hundred three-pointers from the top of the arc.” Most of it is just mechanics. Most important, the ball has to come off your hand consistently, the same every time. It can’t go right and it can’t go left. It can be long or short, but if it’s wide, you’re doing something wrong. You have to groove the proper form and then be able to repeat it every time, like a golf swing—except in golf, there’s not a six-foot-eight guy flying at you just as you’re about to complete the process.
Rapture
Nick Nurse and Phil Jackson
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