first seeing Manhattan: “It is hot-jazz in stone.” It appears 
again in the artist Moholy-Nagy’s account of his visit to a San 
Francisco night club in 1940. A Negro band was playing with 
zest and laughter. Suddenly a player intoned, ÒOne million and  
three ,” and was answered: ÒOne million and seven and a half .” 
Then another sang, ÒEleven ,” and another, ÒTwenty-one .” Then 
amidst “happy laughter and shrill singing the numbers took 
over the place.”

     Moholy-Nagy notes how, to Europeans, America seems to 
be the land of abstractions, where numbers have taken on an 
existence of their own in phrases like “57 Varieties,” “the 5 and 
10,” or “7-Up” and “behind the 8-ball.” It figures. Perhaps this 
is a kind of echo of an industrial culture that depends heavily 
on prices, charts, and figures. Take 36-24-36. Numbers cannot 
become more sensuously tactile than when mumbled as the