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Monday, April 26th, 2004
Flags in the Dust -- This evening, as I was reading the scene where Horace is visiting Belle, it occurred to me that Horace is a poseur. And with that understanding, everything his character did started to make more sense. The other characters so far seem by and large to be either unreflective or else withdrawn and unsocial; but Horace is extroverted, and busy with self-consciously projecting a façade to the people around him. His fancy language is tiresome and unnecessary, and he knows this on some level; but he keeps it up in order to maintain a consistent false persona. This is his connection with Belle, who is a bit of a faker herself.
posted evening of April 26th, 2004: Respond
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Flags in the Dust -- the Bayard's Wild Ride section seguéd nicely into a chapter dealing with the return of Narcissa's brother Horace. I am having a little trouble with this chapter. Horace doesn't really seem that concrete or believable a character, at least when he is present and speaking. When his time in Europe is presented as a story, it is interesting and fun, and the high-flown language seems playful; but when he is moving around Jefferson and talking to Narcissa, it is just dreary.
posted afternoon of April 26th, 2004: Respond
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Friday, April 23rd, 2004
I just realized Sunday will be my blog-day! How am I holding up in the first year? Well, not too bad -- I am not posting super-frequently but it is holding my interest pretty well. I will keep it up for a while and see what develops.
posted afternoon of April 23rd, 2004: Respond
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Last night and this morning I read the longest (so far) block of narrative in Flags in the Dust -- Bayard's odyssey: beginning on page 119 he takes Simon for a drive, scares him with speed, leaves him to walk home; then goes on to town where he gets drunk with MacCallum, goes to look at the stallion MacCallum is buying, rides the stallion, is thrown, is bandaged by Doc Peabody; then Hub and Suratt drive him out to Hub's place, where they drink more whiskey, and drive back to town; then he drives back to Hub's place with Hub, Mitch, and some Negro musicians, they get the bottle and drive to a city or town (apparently not Jefferson) where the musicians play and Mitch sings; then drive back to Jefferson (with Bayard going very fast and scaring the musicians, and stopping frequently to drink whiskey). The next bit is told centering around Narcissa but belongs in the same narrative block -- she is having dinner with her aunt and telephones Jenny to see if Bayard got home alright, and Jenny tells her he did not come home; when she retires (after receiving a visit from Dr. Alford), Bayard brings the musicians to her yard to serenade her and then they leave. Meanwhile an unidentified stalker (whom I believe to be Snopes) is lying on the roof of her garage, looking through her window. Wow! 50 pages later and still going strong...
posted morning of April 23rd, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, April 21st, 2004
Looking at the William Faulkner on the Web site at the University of Mississippi I found his address to the Nobel Prize committee in 1950 -- it is a speech I have read before but one well worth being reminded of. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. A difficult proposition for me to affirm but one which I hope and try to embrace.
posted afternoon of April 21st, 2004: Respond
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Tuesday, April 20th, 2004
Flags in the Dust -- I am trying to pay attention to what reading mode I am in as I read each sentence -- this is an experiment with some potential to disrupt my reading experience and if I find it is doing so too much, I will abandon it. But if I am successful I think this extra level of consciousness about my role in the story will be very useful -- I am trying to achieve a meditative consciousness in reading. My hunch is that Faulkner is particularly well-suited to reading this way.
posted morning of April 20th, 2004: Respond
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Monday, April 19th, 2004
I started a new book today; Flags in the Dust, by William Faulkner. It is the director's cut of his third novel, Sartoris, with over 40 minutes of previously unreleased Yoknatawpha footage. I opened to page 1 and was almost instantly swept away by the lushness of Faulkner's imagery -- beautiful! I was seeing the scene inside my head like a movie privately screened, hearing the words like a bicameral narration. And as I read I would slip into and out of this state -- slip into it when I come across a particularly nice image, out of it when I realize I am not really understanding what is going on and I have to back up a paragraph or two to figure out where the story is. This is a common experience for me when I am reading a good book. Some good books, e.g. House of Sand and Fog, I am in the "cinematic" mode most of the way through, rarely losing the thread. Some good books, e.g. Gravity's Rainbow the first 3 times I read it (well, the fourth time as well to be truthful), interruptions are much more frequent -- there is a lot more complexity and intricacy to the narrative. Both are enjoyable reading experiences; I would venture to say I'm more likely to reread the second type of book. I am glad to be reading Faulkner again, he is a favorite of mine and I haven't read anything by him for a few years.
posted evening of April 19th, 2004: Respond
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Scott McCloud has finished Morning Improv #25, Whose Mind is it Anyway? -- It is just fantastic, by far the most complex and touching story he has written in improv format. Go read it! Set aside a little time to do so -- it is 9 pages long and there is a lot of visual detail to get your mind around.
posted afternoon of April 19th, 2004: Respond
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Friday, April 16th, 2004
Looks like the weather will be excellent here -- lots of sun and warm. I am going to spend an hour or two tailgating before the CRAFTS auction tomorrow morning, then come back home and take Sylvia to her first-ever soccer practice. Sunday will be our first cook-out of the season, Ellen's family is coming over and it is her mother's birthday. The tulips should be opening up today or tomorrow.
posted afternoon of April 16th, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, April 14th, 2004
I have not blogged about woodworking for a long time because, well, I have not been doing any of it. But I am hoping to change that. A couple of nights this week I was in the basement, working on Ellen's bookcase -- she has given me a deadline of September to finish it or she buys one, and I believe I can do it. Also I got the garage cleaned out and have made some stabs towards planning the workbenches I want to build in there. In other home improvement news, Ellen is repainting the sitting room and boy, does it look good! (This is the room where I built in my windowseat, and it has looked funny unpainted ever since.) The color scheme is: sage green walls, bone white trim and doors and ceiling. There is a lot of trim in the room, doing it all took nearly two weeks (of quite intermittent painting). The walls and ceiling are going a lot faster. When she finishes I will put the final bit of molding on the windowseat (a cove between the top of the seat and the wall behind it) and put shades on the windows, and the room will get more use than it had in the past -- our plan is to have that be our general room for congregating in the evenings, instead of our bedroom.
posted evening of April 14th, 2004: Respond
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