Archives for February 2009

I received my earliest religious instruction from my Grandfather, who rather cheerfully explained the coming Apocalypse to me on our way to Kingdom Hall. A few years later I did a little research on my own by reading The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay. This may help you understand why the title of this post is for me no minor question.

The California Literary Review has a great interview with Philip Plait, author of Death From the Skies! and the blog Bad Astronomy. Wouldn’t you know, Bruce, Ben and Billy Bob got most of the science wrong in Armageddon; the good news is that real scientists like Professor Plait are taking the threat seriously.

Roberto Bolaño, a Spanish author (Chilean, Mexican – the Spanish language seems to be the best description of his nationality) died in 2003, but has lately received a lot of attenion for the posthumously published 2666. Including this article in the muy hip magazine n+1. I’ve read very little of Bolaño, although this article makes me want to read more. But it isn’t necessary to have read Bolaño for these sentences from the article to ring a bell:

Considered simply as a job, writing is erratically paid but with flexible hours: potentially not so bad, especially with the hedge funds laying everybody off. But as a vocation? Look around, and all you see is literature and publishing faltering in tandem. People read less and less; worse yet, they’re right to. It’s clear that, besides the occasional small or large check, most writers—ourselves included—write out of vanity and compulsion. One believes in being a writer more, it seems, than in writing. What is it, again, you once had to say? And who, supposedly, wanted to hear it?

Yikes!

(1) Just one God.
(2) Put nothin’ before God.
(3) Watch yer mouth.
(4) Git yourself to Sunday meetin’.
(5) Honor yer Ma & Pa.
(6) No killin’.
(7) No foolin’ around with another fellow’s gal.
(8) Don’t take what ain’t yers.
(9) No tellin’ tales or gossipin’.
(10) Don’t be hankerin’ for yer buddy’s stuff.

Purportedly from: Cross Trails Church in Gainesboro, TN

I was speaking with a friend the other day about the place of poetry in our lives, which got me thinking about Percy’s thought about how the expression of depression might lead to a reversal of depression (I’ll leave it to Rufus to find us chapter and verse). And in fact the word “expression” actually derives from the Latin “exprimo”, meaning “to press out, force out, squeeze forth”. Which might equally apply to certain scatalogical functions and such fine verse as this:

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

~ Philip Larkin

Not sure if Percy ever read Larkin. Maybe Rufus can dig that up for us as well. As I remarked to my friend, Philip Larkin (or this poem) strikes me as a perfect specimen of mid-century-middle-class-white-guy-possessed-by-Original-Sin-via-Freud type of thinking. Which is not to say there isn’t some truth to it.

Apologies to all the parents out there. Especially mine.