A Momentary Taste of Being

HD arrives in London--a font of imagism

"Bringing Past Sex to Life is Complicated"

The Phantom Tollbooth : An Appreciation by Michael Chabon

An appreciation of Dorothy Dunnett's historical novels

Prof. Myers posts an interesting note about misreading Victor Frankl. Prof. Myers's point is quite different from my own.  The book is often presented as the story of the triumph over the inhumanity of death camps--but I failed to find any real triumph here.  Frankl was as oppressed and impressed by the camps as any other survivor.  His triumph was a triumph of numbers and accident--not a triumph of will--or at least not exclusively.  This doesn't detract from either Frankl or what he came to understand from the experience, but it records an instance of "reading into."  There is no triumph here--there is no meaning that one can paste over the experience of the holocaust.  There is no ultimate conclusion from it except that some, for reasons of grace, will, or completely opaque causes, survive and others do not.  When the "how" of existence becomes merely mechanistic there can be no triumph.  I have not yet found the triumph in Frankl's book an...

Is Ulysses overrated? Ah, this is so simple--of course it isn't.  It may be liked more by some, less by others-but its fundamental influence on the shape of nearly all subsequent fiction--the one-two punch of Joyce and Woolf given us much of the restucturing and understanding of the way fiction works.  It is, in fact, impossible to overestimate the importance of Ulysses .  I would ask rather that in the shadow of Ulysses , have we underestimated the importance of some other works of twentieth century fiction?

More about Diana Wynn Jones via Books Inq.

The Contemplative Journey of Franz Liszt A friend sent me this link.  Franz Liszt is one of my very favorite classical composers--I love the Etudes after Paganini and the Mephisto Waltzes, the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, amongst other wonderful pieces. An excerpt: Both Franz Liszt's piece, "Benediction de Dieu dans la Solitude," and St. John's poem revel in their rich and ecstatic language, daringly extreme in their attempts to depict a state of spiritual bliss, the highest form of which was pointedly called the spiritual marriage by many saints The first-time listener or reader would have been unwittingly on target in his intuitive, instinctive reaction. Both the composer and poet realized (the former through aspiration and reading, the latter though inspiration and burning experience) that Christian contemplation is meant to be a love affair; that human love, even at its pinnacle, is a mere shadow of that love with which God created us and to which he...

Prophet of the Sexual Revolution Yet one more reason to look askance at Mr. Wells.  Some wonderful work, but some dubious thought.

Woolf in London I am an inveterate "literary tourist."  On a geology field expedition to a GSA convention in Macomb, Illinois, I felt unavoidably dragged to Spoon River and the birthplace of Edgar Lee Masters.  I took a trip up to Amish Country in Ohio to visit Winesburg (which is not at all situated as Sherwood Anderson would have us believe).  I've walked through Dublin with Joyce and on my one trip to Fort Lauderdale when I was on my own, I went looking for Slip 17 at the boat club where Travis McGee docked "The Busted Flush." So, naturally, articles like this really appeal to me.

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair"  a discussion.

On "Neutral Tones" A masterpiece of a poem and inspiration for one of my earlier poems also inspired by the language of Finnegans Wake.

Fred talks about the quatrain that gives this blog its name. He thinks bleak, but in my perverse and obstinate view, I find it sublimely beautiful and an encouragement in the carpe diem form.  The particular obscure "Oh Make Haste!"  at the end--could it not refer to the momentary taste itself?  A twisted, perhaps a tortured reading, but one that bears careful scrutiny amid the other quatrains that in a singularly un-Muslim way hard on the "Seize the Day" theme. And if it all is for a momentary taste of being--what a wonderful and beautiful blessing.  "A momentary taste of being from the well amid the waste."  I picture a bleak gray landscape suddenly transformed. I picture also the daily trudge through life, that suddenly is opened up in experience and in literature, by a momentary takes of being.  Bleak sounding, but it resonates with me as the experience of a day and it holds open the prospect that if we could learn but to live our lives would ...

A consideration of two works--Murakami and Millhauser I must confess to lacking an appropriate appreciation for either author.

An interesting, intriguing history of science fiction diagram that clamors for more attention than I can give it right now.

A view of Joyce's short fiction.

A lovely appreciation of Whitman's "Song of Myself."

Reflections of Djuna Barnes

Remember John Keats

Australian literature considered: the triumvirate