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Working my way through this bad boy
It's good, but it's also written entirely in a thick glaswegian accent, so proceed with caution.
Meant to read this, but never got around to it. Do remember quite liking this one though:
Got a friend who won't shut up about Wyndham Lewis (despite his perhaps bad politics), so I picked up this book of short stories, and plan to pick one or two off before bedtime
i know this encompasses more than just literature, but it's crazy how much creativity and brilliance there is to be found amongst the early modernists, and also how many awful political perspectives and actions. right off of the bat, i always think of F.T.Marinetti and the Italian Futurists, a number of which were thugs for Mussolini at points. also, i was bummed to discover that Louis-Ferdinand Celine was pro-fascism and anti-semitic at points, because
Journey to the End of the Night and
Death on the Installment Plan are two of my absolute favorite novels. i have no idea how someone could end up espousing those ideals who had previously written this about his experience in WWI:
"I'd never felt so useless as I did amid all those bullets in the sunlight...
...A vast and universal mockery....That colonel, I could see, was a monster. Now I knew it for sure, he was worse than a dog, he couldn't conceive of his own death. At the same time I realized that there must be plenty of brave men like him in our army, and just as many no doubt in the army facing us. How many I wondered. One or two million, say several millions in all? The thought turned my fear to panic. With such people this infernal lunacy could go on for ever...
...Could I, I thought, be the last coward on earth?
How terrifying!...All alone with two million stark raving heroic madmen, armed to the eyeballs?...With and without helmets, without horses, on motorcycles, bellowing, in cars, screeching, shooting, plotting, flying, kneeling, digging, taking cover, bounding over trails, sputtering, shut up on earth as if it were a loony bin, ready to demolish everything on it, Germany, France, whole continents, everything that breathes, destroy, destroy, madder than mad dogs, worshipping their madness (which dogs don’t), a hundred, a thousand times madder than a thousand dogs, and a lot more vicious!
...Men are the thing to be afraid of, always, men and nothing else."
i know this post is long, but i also stopped in to mention that i am once again tussling with John Updike's
Rabbit Tetralogy, specifically,
Rabbit Redux and
Rabbit is Rich (actually, Delillo may be playing a part as well). i'm researching and writing the third chapter of my dissertation, which is looking at how "working-class conservatism" amongst whites is tied to the "local," and how the local is tied to access to the single-family house and lot, and those two novels are my primary texts for this chapter. i know Updike isn't everyone's cup o' tea, but i'm enjoying the reading again...