Tag: Literature

Queequeg Makes His Funeral Plans

Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself, what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favor he asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages.

Moby-Dick
Herman Melville

Pears and Tanks – Kundera quote

To tell the truth, that was not an entirely new trait of hers. The difference was that at one time it had annoyed them. One night, for instance, their country was invaded by the tanks of a gigantic neighboring country. That had been such a shock and brought such terror that for a long time no one could think of anything else. It was August, and the pears in their garden were ripe. A week earlier, Mama had invited the pharmacist to come and pick them. But the pharmacist neither came nor even apologized. Mama was unable to forgive him, which infuriated Karel and Marketa. They reproached her: Everyone else is thinking about tanks, and you’re thinking about pears. Then they moved out, taking the memory of her pettiness with them.

But are tanks really more important than pears? As time went by, Karel realized that the answer to this question was not as obvious as he had always thought, and he began to feel a secret sympathy for Mama’s perspective, which had a big pear tree in the foreground and somewhere in the distance a tank no bigger than a ladybug, ready at any moment to fly away out of sight. Ah yes! In reality it’s Mama who is right: tanks are perishable, pears are eternal.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Milan Kundera

Ahab, Ishmael, Elijah – Moby Dick Character’s Biblical References – Chat GPT

What are the biblical references to Ahab, Ishmael and Elijah in the book Moby Dick

In the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville, there are indeed biblical references to characters such as Ahab, Ishmael, and Elijah. Here’s a breakdown of these references:

Ahab: The character Captain Ahab in Moby Dick is heavily influenced by the biblical figure of King Ahab. In the Bible, Ahab was a king of Israel who is portrayed as wicked and idolatrous. Similarly, Captain Ahab in Moby Dick is depicted as a complex and obsessive character who becomes consumed by his pursuit of revenge against the white whale, Moby Dick. The biblical reference highlights the themes of hubris and the consequences of prideful actions.

Ishmael: The narrator and protagonist of Moby Dick is named Ishmael, which is also a biblical name. In the Bible, Ishmael is the son of Abraham and Hagar. He is considered the ancestor of many Arab tribes. In the novel, Ishmael serves as a symbolic everyman character, representing humanity as a whole and providing the perspective through which the story unfolds.

Elijah: In Moby Dick, Elijah appears as a minor character, serving as a prophetic figure. The character of Elijah draws parallels to the biblical prophet Elijah, known for his fiery zeal and confrontations with kings and false prophets. In the novel, Elijah acts as a harbinger of doom, repeatedly warning Ishmael of the dangers and omens associated with Captain Ahab and the voyage of the Pequod.

These biblical references add depth and thematic resonance to the characters and events in Moby Dick, emphasizing themes of obsession, destiny, and the consequences of human actions.

Martin Amis on David Letterman Show

RIP Martin Amis

Martin Amis, British author of era-defining novels, dies at 73

Influential British author Martin Amis has died at his home in Lake Worth, Fla., of esophageal cancer. He was 73.

His agent, Andrew Wiley, and his publisher, Vintage Books, confirmed his death on Saturday.

This is from Ron Rosenbaum, in his book The Secret Parts of Fortune:

As more and more bodies crammed themselves into the sweaty mosh pit of the Benetton basement, and the wait for the now overdue author went on, I began revolving around in my mind a theory about Mr. Amis’s work, why exactly I find his vision so powerful. Why it represents to me something more than addictively entertaining, acidly sophisticated dark comedy. The way it seems to me to embody as well a perversely spiritual vision, a brilliant heretical counterstatement to the Grand, Overinflated secular religion of our culture: the Religion of Self-Esteem. What Mr. Amis does is counterpose to the doctrine of self-esteem as the be-all and cure-all of the human condition what might be called the Virtue of Self-Loathing, the spiritual Discipline of Self-Disgust.

Here are a couple of his books that I am a fan of:
Money

Money is the hilarious story of John Self, one of London’s top commercial directors, who is given the opportunity to make his first feature film—alternately titled Good Money and Bad Money. He is also living money, talking money, and spending money in his relentless pursuit of pleasure and success. As he attempts to navigate his hedonistic world of drinking, sex, drugs, and excessive quantities of fast food, Self is sucked into a wretched spiral of degeneracy that is increasingly difficult to surface from.

Experience

The son of the great comic novelist Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis explores his relationship with this father and writes about the various crises of Kingsley’s life. He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers. Experience also deconstructs the changing literary scene, including Amis’ portraits of Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom, Philip Larkin, and Robert Graves, among others. Not since Nabokov’s Speak, Memory has such an implausible life been recorded by such an inimitable talent. Profound, witty, and ruthlessly honest, Experience is a literary event.

Jimmy Crack Corn, Blue-Tail Fly – Subtext of

One of the first songs I can remember learning well enough to sing was “Jimmy Cracked Corn” or “The Blue-Tail Fly” (its real name); not for 20 years or so did I realize it wasn’t a nonsense song, a kids’ song, but an expression of glee at a slaveowner’s death. What makes the song chilling is that Massa isn’t made out to be wicked; he isn’t characterized at all, except as Massa—reason enough to crack corn in celebration of his demise. A blue-tail fly got him, as the singer details in a series of verses, each followed by the chorus of merriment (“Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care/ My Massa’s gone away”). We don’t know for sure where he’s gone until the end, when his epitaph is sung. The song was popular in minstrel shows of the 1840s and was handed down for 150 years, transformed into a campfire song for White middle-class kids. Perhaps “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” will be rediscovered In the next century as a cautionary ballad about the need to put on your galoshes.

Faces In The Crowd: Musicians, Writers, Actors, And Filmmakers
Gary Giddins

See also wikiepdia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Crack_Corn

In the Desert – Stephen Crane

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Desert

“In the Desert”[1] is the name given to a poem written by Stephen Crane (1871–1900), published in 1895 as a part of his collection, The Black Riders and Other Lines. “In the Desert” is the third of fifty-six short poems published in this volume. The poem is short, only ten lines, and briefly describes an interaction between the speaker and “creature, naked, bestial” encountered “in the desert”, eating his heart.

Carnivalization – Bakhtin Dostoevsky Criticism

Bakhtin argues that Dostoevsky always wrote in opposition to modern tendencies toward the “reification of man”—the turning of human beings into objects (scientific, economic, social, etc.), enclosing them in an alien web of definition and causation, robbing them of freedom and responsibility.[56] ‘Carnivalization‘ is a term used by Bakhtin to describe the techniques Dostoevsky uses to disarm this increasingly ubiquitous enemy and make true intersubjective dialogue possible. The concept suggests an ethos where normal hierarchies, social roles, proper behaviors and assumed truths are subverted in favor of the “joyful relativity” of free participation in the festival. In The Idiot, everything revolves around the two central carnival figures of the “idiot” and the “madwoman”, and consequently “all of life is carnivalized, turned into a ‘world inside out’: traditional plot situations radically change their meaning, there develops a dynamic, carnivalistic play of sharp contrasts, unexpected shifts and changes”.[57] Prince Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna are characters that inherently elude conventional social definition, or—as Bakhtin puts it—anything that might limit their “pure humanness”. The carnival atmosphere that develops around them in each situation and dialogue (“bright and joyous” in Myshkin’s case, “dark and infernal” in Nastasya Filippovna’s) allows Dostoevsky to “expose a different side of life to himself and to the reader, to spy upon and depict in that life certain new, unknown depths and possibilities.”[58]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idiot

Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb

Turn Every Page explores the remarkable fifty-year relationship between two literary legends, writer Robert Caro and his longtime editor Robert Gottlieb. Now 86, Caro is working to complete the final volume of his masterwork, The Years of Lyndon Johnson; Gottlieb, 91, waits to edit it. The task of finishing their life’s work looms before them. With humor and insight, this unique double portrait reveals the work habits, peculiarities and professional joys of these two ferocious intellects at the culmination of a journey that has consumed both their lives and impacted generations of politicians, activists, writers, and readers.

Visiting a Long-imagined Place, Flaubert Quote

Cairo, January 5, 1850
You ask me whether the Orient is up to what I imagined it to be. Yes, it is, and more than that it extends far beyond the narrow idea I had of it. I have found, clearly delineated, everything that was hazy in my mind. Facts have taken the place of suppositions – so excellently that it is often as though I were suddenly coming upon old and forgotten dreams.

Flaubert and Madame Bovary
Francis Steegmuller

RIP – Russell Banks

Russell Banks, Novelist Steeped in the Working Class, Dies at 82
He brought his own sometimes painful blue-collar experiences to bear in acclaimed stories exploring issues of race, class and power in American life.
NYTIMES

A couple books of his I’d recommend:
Rule of the Bone
When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he claims for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider; he gets a crossed-bones tattoo on his arm, and takes the name “Bone.”

The Sweet Hereafter
In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life’s most agonizing questions: when the worst thing happens, who do you blame?

The Sweet Hereafter was made into a movie, which I also thought was great, check out it’s IMDB page.