academic · half-calf, gilt · upper shelf, near the window
the work argues, in seven cautious chapters, that a corridor is
not the absence of a room but a room declined — flattened along
one axis, asked to do nothing but conduct. the author treats the
corridor as a grammatical case. she
lingers on the threshold at either
end and observes that the rules of both adjoining rooms relax,
slightly, where they meet the corridor's neutral air.
the second half of the volume is given over to a long
examination of skirting,
light fittings, and the particular silence found in
institutional buildings after hours. an appendix lists
thirty-eight named corridors in libraries, sanatoria, and
shipping offices. several no longer exist.
a second volume was announced but never published. the press
lists it, perpetually, as forthcoming.
marginalia · in pencil, p. 47 she is wrong about the long one at the back of the building. it conducts nothing. it accumulates.