Bowser died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. (French literature buffs are screaming with laughter right now. Trust me.) I feel bad that we didn’t pay as much attention to him after we got the dog, but I guess that’s why pugs cost $1,000 and hamsters cost six bucks. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Literature
Look Homeward, Angel
. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly, we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved ghost, come back again. — Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward,… Read more →
What I’m Reading
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him. — Jonathan Swift I’m reading a great, very funny book called A Confederacy of Dunces, written by John Kennedy Toole in 1963. Unfortunately, Toole could not find anyone willing to publish the book and subsequently killed himself in 1969 at the age of 31. Read more →
Not as Consoling as It Should Have Been
Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn’t as consoling as it should have been . . . — Albert Camus, The Stranger Read more →
A Pat on the Head
We come to work, have lunch, and go home. We goose-step in and goose-step out, change our partners and wander all about, sashay around for a pat on the head, and promenade home till we all drop dead. — Joseph Heller, Something Happened Read more →
Today’s Text
Time passes. Listen. Time passes. . . . — Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood Read more →
A Lot of My Problems
I went over to a floor lamp and pulled the switch, went back to put off the ceiling light, and went across the room again to the chessboard on a card table under the lamp. There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover. I couldn’t solve it, like a lot of my problems. — Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep Read more →
Hideously Uncomfortable
I was making myself hideously uncomfortable by not narrowing my attention to details of life which were immediately important, and by refusing to believe what my neighbors believed. I am better now. Word of honor: I am better now. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions Read more →
Dead Poets
For after all Humboldt did what poets in crass America are supposed to do. He chased ruin and death even harder than he had chased women. He blew his talent and his health and reached home, the grave, in a dusty slide. He plowed himself under. Okay. So did Edgar Allan Poe, picked out of the Baltimore gutter. And Hart Crane over the side of a ship. And Jarrell falling in front of a car. And poor John Berryman jumping from a bridge. For some reason this awfulness is peculiarly appreciated by business and technological America. The country is proud of its dead poets. It takes terrific satisfaction in the poets’ testimony that the USA is too tough, too big, too much, too rugged, that American reality is overpowering. And to be a poet is a school thing, a skirt thing, a church thing. The weakness of the spiritual powers… Read more →
Wholesome Authority
Then there were the Romans — whose greatness was probably due to the wholesome authority exercised by the head of a family over all its members. Some Romans had even killed their children; this was going too far, but then the Romans were not Christians and knew no better. — Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh Read more →
Celebrity Interviews Send Me Into a Homicidal Rage
Every once in a while, my wife is flipping channels and on comes one of these celebrity interviews . . . Read more →
Today’s Text
But now isn’t simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until—later or sooner—perhaps—no, not perhaps—quite certainly: it will come. — Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man Read more →
Pursuit
A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: ‘There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.’ — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby That we pursue something passionately does not always mean that we really want it or have a special aptitude for it. Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have. It is usually safe to predict that the fulfillment of an excessively cherished desire is not likely to still our nagging anxiety. In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued. — Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do Read more →
Fun With Obituaries
Several ordinary life stories, if told in rapid succession, tend to make life look far more pointless than it really is, probably. — Kurt Vonnegut Is that a fact? Let’s try it and see! Here are some excerpts from this week’s obituaries in the Irvine World News: Read more →
Albert Camus
On this date in 1960, Albert Camus died in a car smash outside Paris at the age of 47. The incomplete manuscript of The First Man, the autobiographical novel that Camus was working on at his death, was found in the mud at the site of the wreck. What a finish! Quel tableau! Read more →
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born on this date in 1830. Happy Birthday, Emily! I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? “For beauty,” I replied. “And I for truth,—the two are one; We brethren are,” he said. And so, as kinsmen met a night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names. Let’s party! Read more →
So Much Trash
On this date in 1851, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick was published. The book, considered by modern scholars to be one of the great American novels, was dismissed by Melville’s contemporaries and belittled by reviewers as “so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature.” Melville took bad reviews pretty hard and gave up writing fiction a few years later. He died in New York on September 28, 1891, at the age of 72, almost completely forgotten. Read more →
Why Great Novels Are Not Written by 10-Year-Olds
And look upon us, angels of young children, with regards not quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean. — Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son And so, on page 243 of a 900-page novel, the 6-year-old Son referred to in the title dies! “So what’s the rest of the book going to be about?” I wonder aloud. “Your butt,” my son suggests. Read more →
Burning Down the House
I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden We’ve got a number of uncontrolled fires burning in Southern California. It’s raining ash out of a darkened sky in Orange County, where I live, although we’re nowhere near the actual fires. Read more →
That is You
The earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. — Edgar Lee Masters, “Fiddler Jones” There’s a balance to be struck between providing a kid with some direction in his life, and thinking that he should like certain things because I like them, or dislike certain things because I don’t like them, or that he should do things a certain way because that’s the way I would do them, the danger being that even though my way is, of course, the best way, the way he does it is what makes him him . . . Read more →