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Pork People
I'm back at Coffee to the People after having breakfast at the Pork Store. I'm sitting at a different table and this one, I'm delighted to find, has a concert poster for "Not In Our Name" an anti-war benefit in Berkeley from 2003 headlined by Ani Difranco, who I love. Cool.Absalom
p321 Shreve imagining Bon, "...It should have been me that failed; me, I, not he who stemmed from that blood which we both bear before it could have become corrupt and tainted by whatever it was in mother's that he could not brook...."p323 Still Shreve talking to Quentin, "...and you said North Mississippi is a little harder country than Louisiana, with dogwood and violets and the early scentless flowers but the earth and the nights still a little cold and the hard tight sticky buds like young girls' nipples on alder and Judas trees and beech and maple and even something young in the cedars like he never saw before..."
I haven't a clue what Shreve/Faulkner means by this, or what Ivan/Dostoyevsky means by "sticky little leaves", but it would seem there's some male descriptive tradition here that I've never known about -- though I wonder if it can be traced back to either Goethe or Byron. In this day, however, "sticky buds" sounds like potent cannabis.
"besides knowing that that sherbet [Judith] is there for you to take... and him [Bon] not used to that since all the other cups [women] that had been willing and easy for him to take up hadn't contained sherbet but champagne or at least kitchen wine..."
I must confess here that it's never occurred to me to compare women to beverages. Now I'm also wondering what beverage I would be. This is why reading is so valuable :-|
Next Shreve speculates about how incest might differ from other "fleshly encounter[s]." The idle curiosity of sister-less boys.
Troy 2
Still reading that other book. Finished the part where he covers what is now known about the Hittites and Mycenaeans (some) and about the Trojans and "Sea Peoples" (next to nothing). For someone who has spent far too much time reading and thinking about obscure areas of history (and philosophy) I have very little interest in subjects we are unlikely to ever know much about. The best case scenario would be our discovering some historical text -- carved into clay, probably -- by a precursor of Herodotus. How would we ever be able to judge the veracity of his (or her) account? Maybe "alternative facts" go back a thousand or more years BCE -- in fact I'm sure that they do. (I really like Kellyanne's "alternative facts" coinage. This is a term the study of comparative religion has always needed.)What's more important? What actually happened over 3000 years ago or what the Attic tragedians, and Homer and the others, were able to make of it. Just as what actually happened to the characters in Absalom, Absalom! (nothing, in fact) is less interesting than what Quentin and Shreve see in this Rorschach-like story.
You can even say that what Trump does will be less interesting (though it does look like it's going to be compelling TV) than what the rest of us do with this situation. Will this turn into America's "Finest Hour" or, as an article I read suggested, is this just a Hegelian thesis, antithesis situation waiting for a synthesis.
My tendency to see American history as an echo of the Roman Republic is consistent with this Hegelian view, I think. Though I'd never thought of Roman History in that way. I've always viewed the swings between the popular and senatorial Roman factions as like a machine falling out of balance and finally toppling over. But I guess you can see the Empire as a kind of synthesis. And of course the core of this synthesis was that, while the Roman people continued to hold elections and the offices of the Republic remained, the real power was removed from their hands. If anyone before had doubts about why one would want to do that, they should be gone now.
Though I still think there is a chance for a synthesis that preserves the Republic. But that could change if The Opposition can't get it's shit together in the next several years. If instead we go all Italian, I'll have to reconsider the desirability of the Imperium.
Finally
Our rains are finally letting up. On the one hand I don't mind: We've got a good supply of water and snow, and I would like to start getting back to the gym regularly. On the other hand, now people are going outside to smoke again. Now we'll get to see if the air cleaner I bought for myself at Christmas actually works.
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