Posted on 03/09/2007 11:22:35 PM PST by Blind Eye Jones
Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long on the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch! In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.
Anyone who can remotely comprehend this must be some sort of brainiac with a giant mutant head.
Oh no sweat - Joyce is simply informing everyone that he's insane and is reaching out for help.
Yesterday, I finished Dan Brown's (the author of the DaVinci Code) novel Digital Fortress. If Brown is as astoundlingly stupid about the Knights Templar, the Catholic Chuch and various Grail myths as he is about computer technology, operations, security, and basic logic in Digital Fortress, then I can't understand why anyone even cared about the DaVinci Code.
I've read both book and didn't like either. Because I'm a computer security expert, my hate for Digital Fortress grew with each page I read. The climax was about as implausible and stupid as a novel can get. < mocking >"The firewall is 'corroding' (as depicted in 3D on the big computer screen) and the hackers are going to get into our supersecret databases (as depicted by black entities on the screen)! What do we do!? Oh, what do we do!!?" < /mocking >
I was tempted to include that on my list of unreadables. Ironically, the first paragraphs of that book provide a parable most appropriate for this thread, I paraphrase:
A rube goes in to town one day to shop. And in a stall he sees beautifully colored fruits that are new to him, and so he purchases a pound of them. On his way home he stops for lunch and begins to eat his newly bought fruit. The more he eats the hotter his mouth becomes until he is literally crying from the pain.
However, being an ignorant rube, and seeing that this is the only food he purchased while in town, he continues to eat until, of course, he dies.
Said Beezelbub to his grandson, "if you don't like the fruit; stop eating."
I took the sage's advice and set the book aside.
There was one description that Solzhenitysn wrote - I think it was in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" - but I could be wrong....this description really remained with me.
I'll paraphrase it....
A group of ragged hagggard half starved prisoners were walking with their guards through the snow in Siberia for several miles on their way to a day of debilitating labor in the extreme cold - and then they would have to walk back again to a cold barracks and watery soup. Everyone of them was totally miserable, facing death at the hands of their guards - they were in the last stages of deprivation. Then through the trees comes a small herd of deer - stunningly beautiful against the snow and the forest. Their sleek bodies, their grace.
The people stopped - both prisoners and guards - to admire the marvelous creations of G-D's natural world. And then the animals,leaping and running, disappeared through the trees - and the people went back to the h*ll they had created for themselves.
It was a stunning reminder that the beauty of the world as created still exists though we ourselves all too often subject ourselves to a human-created h*ll.
I found the first half of Gravity's Rainbow readable, even enjoyable. After that, the writing seemed more and more unbearably self-indulgent and pointless. I gave up about 3/4 of the way through. That was years ago though; if I ever end up with endless time to waste in the future, I might give it another shot.
Actually, his daughter was schizophrenic. Maybe she edited him.
Thanks. I see you defended Steppenwolf -- I love it, too, and also thoroughly enjoyed Narcissus and Goldmund, which might be my fave. At any rate, Hesse is the bomb -- I often consider the balancing act of life in his terms, the attempt to win (survive!) the battle between the carnal and the spiritual; the natural ease of the one vs. the required self-discipline/self-control of the other.
Aw man, 'Dahlgren'... I tried several times as a teen, I just couldn't figure it out. And I was a big sci-fi buff, too. I remember being surprised to read years later that Delaney was a gay black dude.
That book more than any made me realize that there was a deep end of the pool, a place where only boring intellectuals and nerds dwell. It was a place where no one ever gets laid. "Dahlgren" made me turn back from the edge of the fanboy abyss, and for that I am thankful. It was back to cars, girls and beer after my sci-fi phase.
Hated Moby Dick - just hated it.
Wasn't there an entire chapter devoted to blubber?
oh ick
Lies, lies! Why must we make this place of truth a house of lies?
Anything by Ernest Hemingway. His writing and my brain synapses don't mix.
Well, there you go.
and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
His earliest works I loved, especially the Dubliners short stories. But he wrote those stories before he went bonkers.
His earliest works I loved, especially the Dubliners short stories. But he wrote those stories before he went bonkers.
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