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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one’s hands altogether by death.
Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter.
He rushed along ignoring the new dark knowledge that he now half-understood - that to triumph was also to wreak havoc.
Jack Kerouac, The Town & The City. Always a strange book for me to pick up, given that it’s about Peter Martin from Galloway (really Lowell) MA. A book written by the favorite son of my hometown, with references to events that mirror those of my own life. I’ve never gone past the first hundred pages for this reason…interesting in its own right, given my rational, anti-superstitious nature.
What I love about this simple line, from a description of a first football triumph (again mirroring my own distant experience, same school, etc), is that it alludes to everything that Kerouac would pursue from this point on…the duality of human nature, the competing desires he felt, his constant battle between creative and destructive impulses…even the fact that for every reader who loves him, you can find at least one who hates him.
As for me, I always felt a bit both, a love-hate relationship with Kerouac’s ghost - like he allowed his considerable talents to get one-dimensional by valuing feeling over form in his stream-of-consciousness, jazz-inspired style. But - and this is big, and something I appreciate more with the passage of time - when it works, when he’s whipped himself into a frenzy and he reaches down into something real, there is no writer I feel more attuned with. We’re cut from the same cloth, share a common legacy, born into this strange little corner of the universe. I feel every last emotion as if it’s my own, every desire and disappointment. The only other writers I’ve ever felt that with were Henry Miller and Dostoevsky, and it was wholly unsurprising to me to find out that Kerouac idolized both of them. What all of them shared was a desire to make the writing transparent, to reach across the chasm and share an experience as if it was your own. Energy and the raw experience trump the language, character development, and plot in their hands.
Postscript: Kerouac published The Town and the City in 1950 at the age of 28. I turned 28 three days ago. I think it’s about time I finished this book.
ok, one last inspiration post before I make some popcorn and watch a bad movie on a very quiet friday night. My German skills are failing me, and the text is really small, but if memory serves this is Death saying that he can’t take any more (after the trench warfare in Belgium has caused such stupefying levels of carnage).
via SIMPLICISSIMUS
I have a fascination with the early twentieth century subversive German literary magazine, Simplicissimus, that’s due in equal share to my German history classes, fall spent living and working in Munich right near the Alter Simpl, and appetite for imagery. Simplicissimus was important for more than its art, but it’s so visually stunning that it’s hard not to forget the political message…well, until you see a cover depicting Death stalking Europe during WWI or the “red beast” of Communism rising from beneath a city in the industrialized Ruhr valley.
Anyhow…more to come on this topic.
The judge smiled. Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he is in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge.
Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridian. Glittering, deceptively vicious prose at every turn. You really have to get a fuller account of ‘the judge’ to appreciate just how fascinating a character this is and just what kind of experience informs this slice of philosophy. Read this book, you won’t regret it.
The Jabberwocky
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Lewis Carroll, 1872
