(no subject)
Way behind on posting! Way behind on reading! Remedying the first now, then off to fix the second!
Books I have read in the Christian Year 2011
11books, 2770 pages (251.8 avg. pp./book)
11. The Clean House and Other Plays, Sarah Ruhl (411 pp.)
10. Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen, trans. Rolf Fjelde (290 pp.)
9. Beyond the Fields We Know, Lord Dunsany (299 pp.)
8. Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis (430 pp.)
7. What’s the Matter With Kansas, Thomas Frank (296 pp.)
6. The Ethical Slut, Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy (282 pp.)
(February)
5. Why Cats Paint, Heather Busch and Burton Silver (96 pp.)
4. Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, Kathryn Joyce (251 pp.)
3. 77 Dream Songs, John Berryman (84 pp)
(January)
2. “May the Farce Be With You,” David Rogers (96 pp.)
1. The Perfect Cup, Timothy James Castle (235 pp.)
Frank
36
In its implacable bitterness Kansas holds up a mirror to the rest of us. If this is the place where American goes looking for its national soul, then this is where America finds that its soul, after stewing in the primal resentment of the backlash, has gone all sour and wrong. If Kansas is the concentrated essence of normality, then here is where we can see the deranged gradually become normal, where we look into that handsome, confident, reassuring, all-American face-class present, quarterback, Rhodes scholar, bond trade, builder of industry-and realize that we are staring into the eyes of a lunatic.
120-121
The object of all this breast-beating underdoggery is not to unvictimize the average Americans for whom conservatism claims to speak. While most of us think of politics as a Machiavellian drama in which actors make alliances and take practical steps to advance their material interests, the backlash is something very different: a crusade in which one’s material interests are suspended in favor of vague cultural grievances that are all important and yet incapable of ever being assuaged.
239-240
Yes, the Cons will acknowledge, things have gotten materially worse on the farms and in the small towns, but that’s’ just business, they tell us. That is just the forces of nature doing their thing. Politics is something different: Politics is about blasphemous art and crazy lawsuits filed by out-of-control trial lawyers and smart-talking pop starts running down America. Politics is when the people in the small towns look around at what WalMart and ConAgra have wrought and decide to enlist in the crusade against Charles Darwin.
Lewis
23
He was in that most blissful condition to which a powerful young man can attain-unrighteous violence in a righteous cause.
139
Elmer knew by now that thought Floyd Naylor was not exactly a virgin, his achievements and his resolution were considerately less than his desires, and he set to work to improve that resolution. He took Floyd off to the pasture and after benignly admitting that perhaps a preacher oughtn’t to talk of such things, he narrated his amorous conquests till Floyd’s eyes were hungrily bulging. Then, with giggling apologies, Elmer showed his collection of what he called Art Photographs.
Floyd almost ate them. Elmer lent them to him. That was on a Thursday.
236
All over the room were the aged dog and ancient cat, who detested each other, never ceased growling at each other, and at night slept curled together.
262
His possessions were not very consistent. He had a beautiful new morning coat, three excellent lounge suits, patent leather shoes, a noble derby, a flourishing top hat, but he had only two suits of underclothes, both ragged. His socks were of black silk, out at the toes. For breast-pocket display, he had silk handkerchiefs; but for use, only cotton rags town at the hem. He owned perfume, hair-oil, talcum powder; his cuff links were of solid gold; but for dressing-gown he used his overcoat; his slippers were a frowsy pulp; and the watch which he carried on a gold and platinum chain was a one-dollar alarm clock.
The worst cancer in religion is the use of the metaphor.
Dunsany
32
A kindly god is Jabim, whose heart is sore if anything be lost.
Do all our prophets not fear death? Isn’t this recipe for mental illness?
67-68
“What should the wind care for the hours of calm, or thou for death?”
“Thy life is long; Eternity if short
“So short that, shouldst thou die and Eternity should pass, and after the passing of Eternity thou shouldst live again, thou wouldst say: ‘I closed mine eyes but for an instant’
“There is an eternity behind thee as well as one before. Hast thou bewailed the aeons that passed without thee, who art so much afraid of the aeons that shall pass?”
135-136
“They made Remorse with his fur grey like a rainy evening in the autumn, with many rending claws, and Pain with his hot hands and lingering feet, and Fear like a rat with two cold teeth carved each out of the ice of either pole, and Anger with the swift flight of the dragonfly in summer having burning eyes. I will not forgive these gods.”
Ibsen
Xxii
To confront one’s life as repetition is to confront oneself; to confront oneself in such terms is to experience the paralysis of despair; but to accept despair would be to affirm at least the potentiality of self-transcendence in other dimensions of existence.
…
So, for the Gyntian personality, the cycle must hold; and the effective function of fantasy, in proceeding by roundabouts, we see, is to throw just enough of a veil over repetition to persuade the self that no really fundamental change or effort is necessary.
Xxiii
Peer Gynt is an undeveloped plate on which nothing has really registered. In this antiromantic work that employs the full resources of the romantic theater, the nonheroic hero is the pilot model of the hollow man of our own time, rendered perplexed and anxious by problems of identity and direction.
127
You must flash in view, then fade like a dream.
131
It piques your fancy!
To try to stop time by skipping and dancing;
To fight the current by preening and mincing!
To strum the lute, take love for a fact,
Then end like a hen-by getting plucked.
The dregs, they say, leave the bottle last.
240
More specifically, the world that Peer Gynt is poised to enter, the world of the future, of financiers and deals, international trade and mass exploitation, is epic, is history on the move; the world he tries to leave behind, the world of the past, of simple verities and home truths, small minds and smaller opportunities, is lyrical, a grieving celebration of lost possibilities. The unaccomplished synthesis of the two is one version of the dramatic conflict.
Ruhl
Clean House
I’m not a man who falls in love easily. I’ve been faithful to my wife. We fell in love when we were twenty-two. We had plans. There was justice in the world. There was justice in love. If a person as good enough, an equally good person would fall in love with that person. And then I met-Ana. Justice had nothing to do with it.
There once was a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was married to a nurse. He loved her-immeasurably. One day Halsted noticed that his wife’s hands were chapped and red and when she came back from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.
When I met Ana, I knew:
I loved her to the point of invention.
92
No you’re not. If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t have done it. We do as we please, and then we say we’re sorry. But we’re not sorry. We’re just-uncomfortable-watching other people in pain.
Late
125
I want to be able to imagine your day-every moment-like a beautiful detailed painting-the sort a Russian might paint on a hollow egg.
Melancholy
237
I would like to die and be reborn as a mushroom.
I would like to stay warm and slightly damp.
I will release spores now and again when it suits my mood.
261
She’s-delicate. She could spend an entire afternoon filling a bowl with water, and putting yellow flowers into the bowl.
275
It’s this feeling that you want to love strangers, that you want to kiss the man at the post office, or the woman at the dry cleaners-you want to wrap your arms around life, life itself, but you can’t and this feeling wells up in you, and there is nowhere to put this great happiness-and you’re floating-and then you fall down and become unbearably sad. And you have to go lie down on the couch.
Eurydice
385
Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music.
If we were in a restaurant, sometimes I would get embarrassed because Orpheus looked sullen and wouldn’t talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much.
But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats.
This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in the moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.
Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Words can mean anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.
(She looked at her father, embarrassed for revealing too much)
Or maybe two or three things. But only one thing at a time.
Books I have read in the Christian Year 2011
11books, 2770 pages (251.8 avg. pp./book)
11. The Clean House and Other Plays, Sarah Ruhl (411 pp.)
10. Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen, trans. Rolf Fjelde (290 pp.)
9. Beyond the Fields We Know, Lord Dunsany (299 pp.)
8. Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis (430 pp.)
7. What’s the Matter With Kansas, Thomas Frank (296 pp.)
6. The Ethical Slut, Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy (282 pp.)
(February)
5. Why Cats Paint, Heather Busch and Burton Silver (96 pp.)
4. Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, Kathryn Joyce (251 pp.)
3. 77 Dream Songs, John Berryman (84 pp)
(January)
2. “May the Farce Be With You,” David Rogers (96 pp.)
1. The Perfect Cup, Timothy James Castle (235 pp.)
Frank
36
In its implacable bitterness Kansas holds up a mirror to the rest of us. If this is the place where American goes looking for its national soul, then this is where America finds that its soul, after stewing in the primal resentment of the backlash, has gone all sour and wrong. If Kansas is the concentrated essence of normality, then here is where we can see the deranged gradually become normal, where we look into that handsome, confident, reassuring, all-American face-class present, quarterback, Rhodes scholar, bond trade, builder of industry-and realize that we are staring into the eyes of a lunatic.
120-121
The object of all this breast-beating underdoggery is not to unvictimize the average Americans for whom conservatism claims to speak. While most of us think of politics as a Machiavellian drama in which actors make alliances and take practical steps to advance their material interests, the backlash is something very different: a crusade in which one’s material interests are suspended in favor of vague cultural grievances that are all important and yet incapable of ever being assuaged.
239-240
Yes, the Cons will acknowledge, things have gotten materially worse on the farms and in the small towns, but that’s’ just business, they tell us. That is just the forces of nature doing their thing. Politics is something different: Politics is about blasphemous art and crazy lawsuits filed by out-of-control trial lawyers and smart-talking pop starts running down America. Politics is when the people in the small towns look around at what WalMart and ConAgra have wrought and decide to enlist in the crusade against Charles Darwin.
Lewis
23
He was in that most blissful condition to which a powerful young man can attain-unrighteous violence in a righteous cause.
139
Elmer knew by now that thought Floyd Naylor was not exactly a virgin, his achievements and his resolution were considerately less than his desires, and he set to work to improve that resolution. He took Floyd off to the pasture and after benignly admitting that perhaps a preacher oughtn’t to talk of such things, he narrated his amorous conquests till Floyd’s eyes were hungrily bulging. Then, with giggling apologies, Elmer showed his collection of what he called Art Photographs.
Floyd almost ate them. Elmer lent them to him. That was on a Thursday.
236
All over the room were the aged dog and ancient cat, who detested each other, never ceased growling at each other, and at night slept curled together.
262
His possessions were not very consistent. He had a beautiful new morning coat, three excellent lounge suits, patent leather shoes, a noble derby, a flourishing top hat, but he had only two suits of underclothes, both ragged. His socks were of black silk, out at the toes. For breast-pocket display, he had silk handkerchiefs; but for use, only cotton rags town at the hem. He owned perfume, hair-oil, talcum powder; his cuff links were of solid gold; but for dressing-gown he used his overcoat; his slippers were a frowsy pulp; and the watch which he carried on a gold and platinum chain was a one-dollar alarm clock.
The worst cancer in religion is the use of the metaphor.
Dunsany
32
A kindly god is Jabim, whose heart is sore if anything be lost.
Do all our prophets not fear death? Isn’t this recipe for mental illness?
67-68
“What should the wind care for the hours of calm, or thou for death?”
“Thy life is long; Eternity if short
“So short that, shouldst thou die and Eternity should pass, and after the passing of Eternity thou shouldst live again, thou wouldst say: ‘I closed mine eyes but for an instant’
“There is an eternity behind thee as well as one before. Hast thou bewailed the aeons that passed without thee, who art so much afraid of the aeons that shall pass?”
135-136
“They made Remorse with his fur grey like a rainy evening in the autumn, with many rending claws, and Pain with his hot hands and lingering feet, and Fear like a rat with two cold teeth carved each out of the ice of either pole, and Anger with the swift flight of the dragonfly in summer having burning eyes. I will not forgive these gods.”
Ibsen
Xxii
To confront one’s life as repetition is to confront oneself; to confront oneself in such terms is to experience the paralysis of despair; but to accept despair would be to affirm at least the potentiality of self-transcendence in other dimensions of existence.
…
So, for the Gyntian personality, the cycle must hold; and the effective function of fantasy, in proceeding by roundabouts, we see, is to throw just enough of a veil over repetition to persuade the self that no really fundamental change or effort is necessary.
Xxiii
Peer Gynt is an undeveloped plate on which nothing has really registered. In this antiromantic work that employs the full resources of the romantic theater, the nonheroic hero is the pilot model of the hollow man of our own time, rendered perplexed and anxious by problems of identity and direction.
127
You must flash in view, then fade like a dream.
131
It piques your fancy!
To try to stop time by skipping and dancing;
To fight the current by preening and mincing!
To strum the lute, take love for a fact,
Then end like a hen-by getting plucked.
The dregs, they say, leave the bottle last.
240
More specifically, the world that Peer Gynt is poised to enter, the world of the future, of financiers and deals, international trade and mass exploitation, is epic, is history on the move; the world he tries to leave behind, the world of the past, of simple verities and home truths, small minds and smaller opportunities, is lyrical, a grieving celebration of lost possibilities. The unaccomplished synthesis of the two is one version of the dramatic conflict.
Ruhl
Clean House
I’m not a man who falls in love easily. I’ve been faithful to my wife. We fell in love when we were twenty-two. We had plans. There was justice in the world. There was justice in love. If a person as good enough, an equally good person would fall in love with that person. And then I met-Ana. Justice had nothing to do with it.
There once was a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was married to a nurse. He loved her-immeasurably. One day Halsted noticed that his wife’s hands were chapped and red and when she came back from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.
When I met Ana, I knew:
I loved her to the point of invention.
92
No you’re not. If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t have done it. We do as we please, and then we say we’re sorry. But we’re not sorry. We’re just-uncomfortable-watching other people in pain.
Late
125
I want to be able to imagine your day-every moment-like a beautiful detailed painting-the sort a Russian might paint on a hollow egg.
Melancholy
237
I would like to die and be reborn as a mushroom.
I would like to stay warm and slightly damp.
I will release spores now and again when it suits my mood.
261
She’s-delicate. She could spend an entire afternoon filling a bowl with water, and putting yellow flowers into the bowl.
275
It’s this feeling that you want to love strangers, that you want to kiss the man at the post office, or the woman at the dry cleaners-you want to wrap your arms around life, life itself, but you can’t and this feeling wells up in you, and there is nowhere to put this great happiness-and you’re floating-and then you fall down and become unbearably sad. And you have to go lie down on the couch.
Eurydice
385
Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music.
If we were in a restaurant, sometimes I would get embarrassed because Orpheus looked sullen and wouldn’t talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much.
But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats.
This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in the moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.
Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Words can mean anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.
(She looked at her father, embarrassed for revealing too much)
Or maybe two or three things. But only one thing at a time.