Odds and ends. Flotsom and Jetsam, Miscellaneity

[Stephen Fox]

I had a long running thread once on the ARts that was one of the top five in this room in hits, but Keithe in all his wisdom, wisdom that escaped me, took down.

I hope this noble venture has a better fate. Sometimes some of us come across notable pieces that defy that categories of this board, but worth bigger notice than we might get on our various blogs or other platforms.

To that end here is a great link, and I'm sure others of you have offerings

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... sm/284564/

[Stephen Fox]

This time of the year I always get the urge to do one, but never have. Any offerings from memorable ones whether you were present or not?

If I were to do one this year I would paraphrase and reference James Wood's recent book review in the New Yorker, the final thought. Will link it soon.

Last year was pretty memorable at Collinsville. The undocumented salutatorian's address went straight to the Deacon Governor Bentley courtesty of a front page shout out in the Ft Payne Times Journal.

I peaked out too early as a Commencement Marshall in Gaffney for the Class of70, me finishing the next year. Was getting difficult to get everybody seated in the HS gymnasium. I think every grad had four tickets they could distribute from folks from Goucher or somewhere were packing it out.

I did a great job, pretty much took over and were seating folks as if I had tenure at a Billy Graham Crusade, Head Usher!

[Stephen Fox]

If you wade through this:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/b ... ntPage=all

[Stephen Fox]

The same may be said of us someday. Bottom line read this great novella:

Here are the closing sentences of Denis Johnson's Train Dreams:


He (wolf boy)laid his head back until his scalp contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming in from all four directions, low and terrifying, coming up from the ground beneath the flor,and it gathered into a sound that sucked at the hearing itself, and coalesced into a voice that penetrated the sinuses and finally into the very minds of thos hearing it, taking itself higher and higher,more and more awful and beautiful, the originating idea of all such sounds ever made, of the foghorn and the ship's horn, the locomotive's lonesome whistle, of opera singing and the music of flutes and the continuous moanmusic of bagpipes. And suddenly it all went black. And that time was gone forever.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/s ... son-review

[Stephen Fox]

Over the weekend I've had repeated viewings of my friend Brett Morgen's doc about the Stones, Crossfire Hurricane.

Keith Richards says early in this narrative history told by the band, hethe insanity was such he had a running joke with Brian Jones, they could play Popeye the Sailor Man and the SH_t would hit the fan.

Hilarious in context.

[Stephen Fox]

A Great Poem:

There’s a possum who appears here at odd times,
often walking up the path to the house
in the middle of the day like a little ghost
with a long tail and a blank expression on his face.


He likes to slip behind the woodpile
but sometimes he gets so close to the window
where I am standing with a glass in my hand
that I start to review my sins, systematically


going from one commandment to the next.
What is it about him that causes me
to begin an examination of conscience,
calling to mind my failings in this time of reflection?


It could just be the twitching of the tail
and that white face, but his slow priestly pace
also makes a contribution, as do the tiny paws,
more like hands, really, with opposable thumbs


able to carry a nut or dig a hole in the earth
or lift a chalice above his head
or even deliver a document,
I am thinking as he nears the back door,


not merely a subpoena but an order
of excommunication with my name and a date
written in fine Italian ink
and signed with a flourish of the papal sash.

[Haruo]

I agree, that's quite a poem.

[Stephen Fox]

I call in about the 40th minute. you can listen online. Great company with Flannery Oconnor and a Georgetown lit critic:

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014- ... -mcdermott

[Stephen Fox]

I met him briefly once at the Sewanee's writer's conference.

His conclusion in a recent review in the New Yorker:

I doubt that David Mitchell’s intention was to return the secular novel to theological allegory, but that is what “The Bone Clocks” does. Above all, his cosmology seems an unconscious fantasy of the author-god, reinstating the novelist as omniscient deity, controlling, prodding, shaping, ending, rigging. He has spoken of his novels as forming one “Über-book,” in which themes and characters recur and overlap: an epic ambition. Battles involving men and gods are, indeed, the life-and-death-blood of the epic form. But didn’t the epic hand off to the novel, in the last book of “Paradise Lost,” when the Angel Michael tells Adam and Eve that, though they will lose actual Paradise, they will possess “a Paradise within thee, happier far”? The novel takes over from the epic not just because inwardness opens itself up as the great novelistic subject but because human freedom asserts itself against divine arrangement. The “human case” refuses to be preordained. The history of the novel can, in fact, be seen as a secular triumph over providential theology: first, God is displaced; then the God-like author fills the theological void; then the God-like author is finally displaced, too. Despite Mitchell’s humane gifts as a secular storyteller, “The Bone Clocks” enforces an ordained hermeticism, in which fictional characters, often bearing names from previous Mitchell fictions, perform unmotivated maneuvers at the behest of mysterious plotters who can do what they want with their victims. Time to redact this particular Script. ♦

[Stephen Fox]

Dean of the Divinity School Greg Jones in her sermon in Willimon's collection. From a sermon in the year 2000

" A Preacher gets up for children's church and says I'm thinking of something brown with a bushy tail that gathers acorns in the fall for winter, What is it? The children get quiet, then an 8 year old boy raises his hand and says, Preacher I know the answer is probably Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me!"

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... re/381766/

[Stephen Fox]

Count me in the Franco, Cormac McCarthy column.

Scott Haze Ballard is an unforgettable character. The novel is set in Sevier County Tennessee where my Dad's family came from in the late 1800's. The County where my Dad preached to George McGovern.

UK Guardian ripped the movie. I was quite taken with it, even though it's graphic. The Bible says the Heart is evil, desperately wicked, who can know it. No question after watching this film.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/revi ... d-20140731

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation ... 7CX_5D6y6E

[Stephen Fox]

http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780820343747

Will get the correct link soon. If anxious google for Mitchell, New Yorker.

[Stephen Fox]

In the Knobs where the folks on my Dad's side come from, the Foxes and the Heltons, though far as I know we are not kin to Lester Ballard except in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Low Budget but Scott Haze as Lester is unforgettable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KnbqSf9eWE

[Stephen Fox]

James Wood had a book by that title

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014- ... ebroadcast

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.npr.org/2014/10/19/357341858 ... n-classics