Lancelot, by Walker Percy

Some of the best fiction-writing I have ever read. And one of the sleaziest, most harrowing tales. I need to read something else. Not "Southern." Civilized. Maybe slow, English, and sort of boring.

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Lunch, plus some cheesy mashed potatoes.

Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) was a descendant of Spanish Jews. He lived in the Netherlands, and his "philosophy" is about what one would expect of such a one--a "strange dark theism," to quote the author of this book. With the influence, long-lasting and deep, of Judaism and Islam, and his more recent lifestyle of Christianity, it's a wonder the poor fellow knew what to think when the Renaissance more or less freed European man's mind. I find his theses to be more political than philosophical, and maybe self-contradictory, and maybe not. I think I agree with one thing he said (quoting this author):

". . . there is no wrongdoing (peccatum) in a state of nature. Only when there is sovereignty (imperium) is there justice and wrongdoing, both of which are therefore artefacts of man's political condition."

This sort of corresponds to my feeling about Cain (grief). And, for that matter, Adam and Eve (lack of astonishment).

This book is only 118 pages long. It took me a long time to read it, because for me, reading philosophy is like trying to read an insurance policy. Through repeated repetition, they try so constantly to cover what they've already said, that the mind rebels.

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Well, I Never!
I usually sit with my legs crossed. I suppose that's what accounts for the big red spot I discovered on the back of each of my legs, just below the knee.  I guess it doesn't matter.

I am old, Father William.

The last two books I've read, or tried to read in the case of the Roman one, had scenes or descriptions of people torn apart, one by animals and one by war, with their "nine miles of tubing" scattered over the landscape, preceded and followed by scenes of unutterable misery. Such prose is probably therapeutic in some way for the writers, and that realism is real is indisputable. But a couple of vicarious doses is about all I can take for a while. I need an antidote, maybe a little bit of Lewis Carroll.

 

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Yesterday I saw that bobtailed squirrel up close. That is one weird-looking animal. Its face and underside are streaked black and gray, and the rest is either black or charcoal gray. The little old ratty-looking tail is hardly enough for him to lean back on. Wish I could get a photo of him. Or her.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Name Of the Rose, by Eco, is one of the best novels I've ever read. I assumed that I would like Foucault's Pendulum, and one year I set about to read it. I read and read, and kept reading, sure that pretty soon I would come to some connected words that I fully understood. I did dimly recognize references to one esoteric topic in which I was not interested enough to explore further. If I remember correctly, it was about halfway through the book that I gave up and quit reading.

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I sit here wondering what to do about all the stuff in my house. I no longer care about most of it. Aside from the books, almost none of it is dear to my heart. What have quilts ever done for me that an old wool blanket couldn't do? What's Limoges to me, or I to Limoges? After reading Stephen King and other horrorists, I find dolls disturbing, and there are sixty-something of them in my house.

Thoreau said no man is so poor that he must sit on a pumpkin. I say a nice plump pumpkin might be an improvement over some of my antiquated (not "antique") seating.

I guess a yard sale is the logical solution, if I can ever summon the stamina to proceed in that direction.

Well, I've read three fifths of Doctor Zhivago, and it seems a shame not to finish it, although it's like running uphill. My hat's off to anyone who has suffered through the whole thing. Hundreds of characters that seem like thousands, with unpronounceable names; there may really be only a few dozens, their names change so often that you can't be sure whom you've met before. The very length of the names makes them exhausting to read. Yuri and Tonia are almost always referred to as Yurii Andreievich and Antonina Alexandrovna. And those are two of the easiest.

The first half of the book takes place during "the war" that's going on before the Russian revolution, and you don't know which war or who "the enemy" is until deep into the quagmire.

This is one instance where the movie is definitely better than the book. In fact, it's one of my favorite movies. Or used to be. I don't know if I'd ever watch it again, except for the exquisite landscape scenery, and the great and beautiful actors in it--Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin. Even old Rod Steiger was great; corrupt and nasty as Komarovsky was, he had a good heart, and I felt sorry for him every time he got his come-uppance. And even in the book, he was always Victor Ippolitovitch Komarovsky--only eleven syllables.

Four Days To Read a Book?

I finally finished it today: The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade. If your heart can break over and over, this book can do it to it. So I don't recommend it. It's a historical novel, about the mother and father of Erasmus. Who was Erasmus? Who were his mother and father? Ancient history. Courage, comrade! le diable est mort!