"I of my own knowledge…"

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

11 AM. So, Papa, more about Spain?

There is always more about Spain. I just wish you could see it for yourself — and I wish you could see it in the 1920s, as I saw it.

Nobody brought it closer than you did.

And I can be there now, if you help focus me, or someone else does — directs my attention there, you know. But the whole tragedy was lying there waiting. They’d missed the war, so they had to have one of their own, or continue dozing in the sun, and that wasn’t possible.

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Wednesday March 8, 2006

All right, Mr. Bowers, since I’m not doing the work I ought to be doing, let’s resume. I’m half through your book and the comparisons between the Radical Republicans of 1865 on and those of 1995 on are just startling! Stolen elections, blatant disregard of law to get what they wanted, ideological agenda (at least when Thad Stevens was alive; less so afterwards), a huge phony impeachment trial – though they expected to win the one in 1868 – and then giant, massive, unprecedented corruption. Unprecedented for Washington, which is saying something! And perhaps the longest-lived effect, the turning over of government and economy to the monopolies that developed from war contracts.

Our case is different because the slavery and Civil Rights issues are settled, but I seem to see an analogy in the ideology that sees “faith based” – meaning right-wing Christian – groups as being under social attack and needing government support. And behind it all, what Joseph Smallwood would call “hog-ism.”

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7 AM Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The 20th century could be called The War About God, and that would be as close a clue to it as any.

Started rereading For Whom The Bell Tolls last night. What an achievement.

Papa, what do you know of the war against God? You certainly left enough clues scattered about in your writings.

It was there to be seen, if you had eyes. But it was harder to see it impartially in those days.

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The War About God

7 AM Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The 20th century could be called The War About God, and that would be as close a clue to it as any.

Started rereading For Whom The Bell Tolls last night. What an achievement.

Papa, what do you know of the war against God? You certainly left enough clues scattered about in your writings.

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Claude Bowers on Reconstruction, racism, and the problems of our times.

Monday March 6, 2006

Last night, for no reason I could have named, I found on my shelves Claude Bowers’ book about the reconstruction era, The Tragic Era, that I have carried around for years but never yet read.

Friends, my suspicion is that this is what we might call a benevolent set-up. First Joseph on Lincoln and the Civil War, now Bowers on how the victory was hijacked. Yes?

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This may be of interest, from our friends Upstairs. I think it’s self-explanatory, except for their coinage of the terms person-group and social-group. That’s part of an on-going explanation of the ways in which we as individuals aren’t nearly as individual as we think we are.

The guys had said that condemnation is not the proper response to what has happened, as condemnation merely isolates the person doing the condemning, and one of my friends had challenged that.

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Monday, May 3, 2010

7 AM. Reading Burke’s biography of Perkins in great hopes, I came to Tom Wolfe’s picking a quarrel with Perkins — for more or less unconscious reasons — and thought, “oh yes, I remember that kind of thing!” The letter full of a different viewpoint that can’t possibly be addressed successfully because the other person can’t distinguish between viewpoint and objective reality.

How many times! And it’s the kind of situation where explanations only compound the confusion and lack of sympathy. How many times! And the closer the sympathy that had entered into it, the less the difference could be breached.

I know I’ve read this book before, but none of it is familiar, and when I did I must have had something in mind — Hemingway and Perkins exclusively? — because I can’t remember knowing or caring much about Fitzgerald or Rawlings or Wolfe, let alone S.S. Van Dine. Nor do I remember about Perkins and his wife, nor Elizabeth in Virginia. It is as if I never read it.

Well, Papa, I don’t want to veer off to Max Perkins. You and I are perhaps in the middle of something but I don’t know that it centers on your relationships with others, even important others.

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[I learned long ago to be cautious about considering something my own bright idea just because it came to me. Case in point, the following. Funny thing here, I distinctly got the word “Gothic” in the place where I finally put it, and distinctly resisted it because I was afraid it was an anachronism, and finally got the nerve to put it in only when I looked in the dictionary and saw that indeed in the time Bertram was around, Gothic cathedrals were beginning to be built. Funny, this process. Lots of resistance to looking unnecessarily foolish. Since it may not be clear who is speaking, I add J for Joseph the Egyptian, B for Bertram, and S for Joseph Smallwood’s cameo appearance.]

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Sunday, May 2, 2010

Papa, I know you liked Max Perkins, and I know that you nonetheless struggled with him. Tell us about your relationship.

The thing about Max was that he listened. He knew what worked and didn’t work. Didn’t always know how to fix a problem, but he could hear, loud and clear, that the problem was there. That’s the only thing he could hear loud and clear!

And of course, the fact that he could hear the manuscript meant that he could hear the author (as author). I mean, simply, that he knew when to pay attention to somebody because he had something.

When Perkins believed in you, he believed in you. Now, that’s a nice trait in anybody, but in this case it

I wandered a bit, sorry.

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Thursday, February 23, 2006

Gentlemen, at your service. Who’s up? Pray bring whomever I need.

[Bertram, a monk of Medieval England] The word “pray” attracted me, brother. And this, by the way, is why you should watch the words you use – one reason that words are so powerful is that they vibrate particular strings, to use our “rings and threads” analogy, and so an unintended resonance may bring to light something you would rather not rouse. I do not mean this as any threat or fear-rousing picture. In my day these things were better understood than in yours, but our language describing them has become strange to you, and so for the moment our knowledge has been lost to you.

Say more, brother. And welcome. I can’t quite remember but it seems to me this communication may be a first between us.

A first occurrence in this format, yes. We have exchanged words before – and you and I share many a thread and already in your life you have consciously shared a task with me and both of us with Joseph the Egyptian.

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