If the work felt uncanny, it was because it was mortgaged; it was borrowing from future accomplishments as much as pointing to it.

   
     I stood, I made myself stand, in front of the early portrait of his mother.  It yielded nothing.  The woman, in profile, is half-asleep; her head is leaning forward and her eyes are closed.  Pastel on paper.  1896.  He was what, fifteen?  A freak of nature.  I could convince myself I saw space curling around the figure or areas where space flattened suddenly, but I did not see this.  Maybe I did see, however, the self-assurance of a painter who assumed his juvenilia would one day be scoured for the seeds of genius, embarrassing phrase.  If the work felt uncanny, it was because it was mortgaged; it was borrowing from future accomplishments as much as pointing to it.  It had started to rain a little; I could hear it falling on the skylight.

--Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station