Gonna bite my tongue and stay clear of Crowley's Krauss grousing. This side the great watershed our differences make little difference. And a lot of that little comes down to a sort of allegiance to the terminology you're accustomed to ( Read more... )

71. Ivanov, Stoppard's adaptation ( Read more... )

Two passages I posted earlier, separately, (and near as I can tell the respective culminations of these two authors) now strike me as closer than I suspected:

Emerson:

Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament: there is he alone with them alone, they pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and ( Read more... )

from Epipsychidion, Shelley

But the chief marvel of the wilderness ( Read more... )

I'd unaccountably never read Socrates' second oration in Phaedrus till now. Past gratitude and amazement and love and disturbance and quickened pulse and the conviction I'll be going back to this within days, I have these observations ( Read more... )

Back to Borges. Genealogical observations ( Read more... )

Hadn't thought of that before, how the end of the Border Trilogy is like that of Peer Gynt--itself following Faust 2 & followed by Joyce's "Ithaca" (rather ruined by the commaless Mollylogue, I still insist). All three of the latter being ripped off--and Catholicized? couldn't tell--in the film Pickpocket.

Can a circle be drawn around this kind of ( Read more... )

"Directive"...Zork, Hopper...Crowley

You are going to imagine you are going up the front path to a house. Not this house or somebody you know's house or any particular house. Tell me first what sort of path.A sand path climbing up a stone embankment from a canal, changing directions exactly once, ending in stairs to the house. I wonder why we're ( Read more... )

Noticing some parallel career aspects among McCarthy, Crowley, Roth and wondering if there's anything to them (dates from my memory and/or ass):

1. Early, very personal novel they work on for a decade or two, while publishing other books that mean less to them. Suttree c. 1959-1979; Engine Summer c. 1966-1979; My Life As a Man c. 1962-1974 ( Read more... )

I feel like talking about Endless Things but there's no one to do it with, downside of jumping the gun. I want to at least say it was no disappointment, in terms of awesomeness or in terms of how you'd have broadly expected it to go--though it's surprises all through, inspired ones, especially toward the end. My fears about the novel's having maybe ( Read more... )