A Momentary Taste of Being

One Saturday I happened into the library and stumbled upon a relatively new book by Kate Grenville with the title of Sarah Thornhill. I might not have given it a second glance--but truth is, I did, and doing so discovered that it was the prize-winning third volume of a trilogy.  Never one to start at the end I went looking for the other two volumes and stumbled upon The Secret River. As is the way with a great many things from the library, it took me a while to get around to it, and then some time to get into it.  And once again, I'm very glad I did. The Secret River  tells the story of William and Sarah Thornhill from the time that William was born to an impoverished family in the London Slums through the time of his transportation to Australia and on to his eventual success there.  In the course of the story, he marries Sarah who goes with him to Australia and in the strange way that things transpired in that early colony becomes his overseer and master.  T...

The Layers --Stanley Kunitz . I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp_sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: "Live in the layers, not on the litter." Though I ...

The most anthologized poem in the English language, but worth another look anyway.                                 TO AUTUMN.                                   John Keats                                                                                    1.     SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,         Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;     Conspiring with him how to load and bless         With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;     To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,       ...

I have long avoided On the Road --for a variety of reasons.  For one, there is Truman Capote's famous gloss, "That's not writing, that's typing."  Second, there has been entirely too much said and written about the work so that it is nearly impossible to read without all of the baggage.  And third, the several times I tried it, I simply wasn't hooked, I found it overwritten and simplistic. Now I've attempted the work and I have to say that there is the phantom of my third reason lingering in my head.  The prose is hopped up, perfervid, and overdosed.  There are entire passage in which it is nearly impossible to make out what Kerouac is trying to convey--and I get the suspicion if I could make it out, I probably wouldn't care for it any more than I do the surrounding prose I comprehend. On the Road is a nightmare of a book--four interminable trips with people who don't know what they want, don't know how to get it, and don't know where t...

From very early on in the novel: "Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me." Kerouac argued that his novel was not an encouragement to much of what followed him, but rather a quest, a quest for a kind of religious salvation.

from Book of Sketches Jack Kerouac   Ah Neal--the shaggy whiteface cows are arranged in stooped   dejected feed, necks   bent, upon the earth   that has a several mood under several   skies & openings--Ah   the sad dry Land ground   that's open between grasses whip't bald by the endless Winds--   the clouds are bunched up on the Divide of the horizon, are shining   upon they city--the little fences are lonely-- The commentary made in a journal entry on an earlier passage works as well for this: There is about this a poetic naivete that is endearing because it is undemanding. The lines break where the lines break without much thought of rule or order or consequence or meaning or rhythm or any of the other guiding lights of well-considered poetry--and yet because it lacks these almost by design, it has an kind of swinging, free and open rhythm--a movement all its own and not replicable without trying and trying ...

Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars reviewed. Warning: spoilers--but a nice consideration of the book with which I largely agree.

Genre: Dark Fantasy/Noir 1st in series 2010 Eleven years ago, James Stark was lured to the basement of a dark house and sent to Hell, literally.  While still alive, he engaged in arena battles in Hell and gradually became one of Hells greatest champions, sending even major devils to the Hell within the Hell for vanquished spirits and the already dead. Now he's come back to avenge the death of his girlfriend and he's spent some time out of touch so iPhones, and other commonplace items of the present are arcane oddities.  But having trained in Hell, he's ready to fight. The prose is tight, the story well plotted and idea-rich.  James Stark is completely believable as a character and what drives him makes him more sympathetic than one would otherwise be inclined to. The story arc traces a traditional noir thriller, while the window dressing is anything but noir.  We've got hell, heaven, and other realms all packed into a story that is a compelling roller coa...

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 ...

Much attention has been focused on Mr. King's time travel We're told here that it is another thousand page brick of a book.  Ah, for the discrete pen of a competent copyeditor.  Having perused a couple of these in the past from Mr. King, he was far better at it when he had the assistance of someone who knew how to trim the fat--take The Stand and The Bloated Stand .  Sometimes less is better. We must wait and see.  A thousand pages outside his normal genre.  We'll need to see what that looks like.

And Steven King's time-travel novel is announced.  It will be interesting to see how he handles the themes. What is intriguing to me is how many people think that writing outside one's home genre is something readily done.  I encounter it time and again. "I plan to write an SF novel." "Oh, have you read much SF." "No, but I watch movies and TV." It might not occur to such a one, but that acquaintance is insufficient to sustain a literary work with the specific conventions of a genre.  Many think that they will be ground-breaking and convention shattering, but to shatter conventions, one must know what the conventions are. All this really has nothing to do with Mr. King's book--it just occurs to me as a result of a conversation that occurred this weekend.

I may already have referenced this essay by Judith Butler, but if not, here it is.

Remember John Keats

Against interpretation

A review that helped me decide that it wasn't really so bad that I tried to read it twice and just couldn't manage. Not that I found it bad or off-putting, I just couldn't get behind it in any way.  And now, I feel relieved of my duty to try to do so. 

Frankenstein: Lost Souls reviewed In general, I am NOT a fan of Dead Koontz.  I've like the Thomas books.  However, this series has always been a bit persuasive.  Perhaps I should consider it.

Fred continues his discussion of the magnificent poem from which this blog derives its title

Three Questions for Ms. Krauss

Who owns Kafka? A lecture by Judith Butler--yes, THAT Judith Butler, founder, progenitor, and proud proprietor of the lesbian phallus, on Franz Kafka's works and how they found their way into print.

Probably too much ink has been spent writing about Ms. Rice's relgious convictions and opinions. Nevertheless, I like this piece greatly--it echoes some of my own thoughts and it portrays a phenomenon too common in Christianity. From "Nice Anne Rice" So Anne now 'follows Christ', but what Christ? It will be the loving, sympathetic teacher, gentle Jesus who is, well, somewhat effeminate really. Anne was a flower child in college, so her Jesus will be the kind of hippie Jesus we're all familiar with from that generation--a long haired, groovy kind of beach bum who meditates on mountaintops, mixes with down and outs and delivers a real cool anti establishment, John Lennon kind of sermon. Then when Anne or her son is 'persecuted' by the hard hearted, hypocritical religious leaders she'll understand how Jesus was persecuted too. That's a real nice Jesus, and that kind of Jesus isn't unknown to the gospels, but remembering that her...