Larry’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2020)

Larry’s comments from the Nonfiction Reading - Only the Best group.

Carol wrote: "I am not sure what Hansel is suggesting. Is he looking at his dead father? What does he mean 'the remnant grace of mother' ? 'Springtime harvest nightfall sunlit face' describes his father at diffe..."

Carol, good questions but I'm not sure I have good answers to those questions.

Since we got into the discussion of Substack a few messages back, here's another offering ... from Robert Christgau's regular music criticisms. This one is his musings about what he thought were the 25 best albums of the last ten years.

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/...

Back to poetry ...

Elegy
Patrick Cabello Hansel

On your face, your beloved face,
your sweat skinned face, the remnant
grace of mother, father hidden there,
the wind of years, the triumphs
and the savagery, on your springtime
harvest nightfall sunlit face, let me
linger there. Let me touch it as
a baby, my fingers unfolded gently,
my voice harboring no words, let
me touch my face to your face,
Father, let us be here, face to face,
in this land we have sown and reaped,
in that time that has no wind, no
words to worry, let us touch,
Father, let us linger, let us be.


Patrick Cabello Hansel, “Elegy” from Quitting Time. © 2021 Atmosphere Press.

Carol (and John), when you read about how Kerouac wrote what turned into On the Road, you'll find that it was on ONE long roll of paper. I wonder if it was the last major work written on on what was essentially a scroll. This is a good article on the creation of the codex by Romans and how it offered a different reading experience than was provided by scrolls.

" Since parchment and papyrus were both expensive, this change made books cheaper. And while bookrolls had a natural maximum length – ones over four metres were rare because they were so difficult to use – codices could come in almost any size. So, works like Virgil’s Aeneid, which had previously been issued as sets of multiple bookrolls, could now be fitted into a single volume. Other advantages became more obvious as time went on, including one of great importance for us: with normal usage, codices last much longer than rolls. Many manuscripts in codex form have survived in libraries for a thousand years, and some even longer, preserving the great works of Greco-Roman antiquity for medieval and now for modern readers. By contrast, the usual lifespan of a bookroll containing the same works was rarely much longer than a century."

SOURCE: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/b...

Illisha wrote: "I just finished Adam Grant's Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know! It was a delightful read and I would recommend for sure!"

Illisha, I just looked at the GoodReads rating (and short review) of this book and it looks excellent.

Carol wrote: "I suspect many authors' novels are essentially non fiction masquerading as fiction and have annoyed (or pleased) quite a few family members or friends! Another notable non-fiction novel, is, of course, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt which has very considerably boosted Savannah's tourist ratings!
..."

I think you are so right about the effect of that book. And maybe the food. I am not sure because it's a small sample size, but all of my friends who go to Savannah or to New Orleans seem to go mainly to eat in the restaurants.

Here's part 2 of Ted Gioia's piece on Jack Kerouac. I honestly don't know how Gioia writes so much high quality stuff ... week in and week out.

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/jack-...

Two paragraphs lifted from the article:

"This was made strikingly clear when the original “scroll version” of Kerouac’s breakout novel On the Road was published in 2007. Here the fictional characters’ names were gone—Dean Moriarty is simply called Neal Cassady, the real life inspiration for the protagonist. Carlo Marx now becomes Allen Ginsberg. And other real people take over their previously fictional roles. When the New York Times reviewed this original version of the novel in August 2007, Luc Sante admitted that “the scroll is essentially nonfiction, a memoir that uses real names.”

Just consider: If Kerouac had retained these real-life identities in the first edition of On the Road, it might now be considered as the prototype of the non-fiction novel. How ironic that much of the credit for legitimizing that innovation is now assigned to Truman Capote, who used it to great effect with In Cold Blood in 1966. Capote was one of Kerouac’s harshest critics, but in this instance, the King of the Beats anticipated him by a decade. "

And a poem for today ... posted by a friend on Facebook:

A Clearing
by Denise Levertov

What lies at the end of enticing
country driveways, curving
off among trees? Often only
a car graveyard, a house-trailer,
a trashy bungalow. But this one,
for once, brings you
through the shade of its green tunnel
to a paradise of cedars,
of lawns mown but not too closely,
of iris, moss, fern, rivers of stone rounded
by sea or stream,
of a wooden unassertive large-windowed house.
The big trees enclose
an expanse of sky, trees and sky
together protect the clearing.
One is sheltered here
from the assaultive world
as if escaped from it, and yet
once arrived, is given (oneself
and others being a part of that world)
a generous welcome.
It's paradise
as a paradigm for how
to live on earth,
how to be private and open
quiet and richly eloquent.
Everything man-made here
was truly made by the hands
of those who live here, of those
who live with what they have made.
It took time, and is growing still
because it's alive.
It is paradise, and paradise
is a kind of poem; it has
a poem's characteristics:
inspiration; starting with the given;
unexpected harmonies; revelations.
It's rare among
the worlds one finds
at the end of enticing driveways.

Denise Levertov, "A Clearing" from This Great Unknowing. ©1999

Carol, the simplest explanation is that Substack is a subscription service that offers paid (and unpaid) newsletters for writers. I subscribe to 15 of them and pay for four of those (Ted Gioia and Robert Christgau for music criticism ... David Warsh's Economic Principals ... and the following one is really different, Carrie Newcomer for folk music and extra stuff including two concerts a year). The ones I pay for are $5/month so it can add up ... but some of the free versions of the newsletters have a lot of stuff.

Here's the Wiki on Substack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substack

And here's the website: https://substack.com/

John wrote: "Larry wrote: "I think that these poems may be the best of his literary efforts. Better, for my own tastes, than On the Road."

Larry, I have never read On The Road. I wonder if I shoul..."


John and Carol,

I learned much that I didn't know about Jack Kerouac from a posting today by Ted Gioia. Here's a link to it. (It's only the first half ... he'll post the second half next week.)

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/jack-...

Whimsical gets it just right, Carol. A nice poem to start the day with.

And, John, I love the poem you posted.

John and Carol,

Here's a great article on Gegory Orr. It looks like he stepped down from his UVA position in 2019.

https://news.virginia.edu/content/poe...

Larry

Carol, I discovered it about three days ago. I can record it, but for reason YouTube TV only saves the latest show … but that’s really not a problem.

We watch 30 minutes of BBC news in the morning and another 30 minutes in the evening… that is enough. There is too much pain … but I feel guilty in some ways for not watching more. We can turn it off … if you’re huddled in a basement in Kiev it just goes on and on.

Carol wrote: "This is a momentous time in European history- Germany is going to rearm at a cost of billions, having been basically a pacifist nation since WW2. .."

Someone, it was either a BBC reporter or a Deutsche Welle reporter, pointed out because of the different sized economies, Germany by going to military spending as 2 percent of the GDP will now spend more on its military than the current Russian spending on Russian spending. That's amazing.

What a great review, Sher. Even the last comment about the work of Bary Moser, the engraver.

And I am particularly sensitive about poets, actually anyone, continuing to do creative work in their seventh decade! :-)

John wrote: "I do feel we are in the midst of a Catastrophe. The cities of the Ukraine are likely to be completely destroyed. How does one live at any time in rubble? They are gone...."

I do believe that Ukraine will win in the end ... after 10 to 20 years. That's a prognostication from U.S. intelligence agencies. And what will be left of Ukraine. I don't think that most of the cities will be reduced to rubble, but the damage will still be immense.

Who pays for that damage and the rebuilding of Ukraine? To the extent possible, I think that the assets of the autocrats/oligarchs who have enabled Putin should be seized and put into escrow accounts. To get the Russian people to go along with this, a lot of those assets should go back to the Russian people and to the Ukrainian people for rebuilding.

Carol wrote: "I have been watching ' Captain Fantastic' set mainly in the Pacific North West and starring Viggo Mortensen. Wonderful scenery and an unusual, quirky story, sad but uplifting and humorous. He is al..."

I have been meaning to watch that one. I like Viggo Mortenson a lot ... especially in his two ultra-violent movies EASTERN PROMISES (which is more than a little timely) and A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.

I think that these poems may be the best of his literary efforts. Better, for my own tastes, than On the Road.