Tobacco Road - Rage

Reading the reviews for Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell (first published in 1932) I was struck by how many current readers were put off by the subject matter - i.e. poor white farmers in Georgia during the Depression. Many readers on Goodreads.com gave the novel only one star (*) while others recognized how the author was trying to paint a tragic portrait of a somewhat neglected class in American society. Caldwell was, if nothing else, relentlessly honest in his depiction of brutish, impulsive, desperate victims of hard times who often behaved erratically and irrationally to their own detriment.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Billed as one of the first detective novels, this mystery about a missing/stolen diamond would be worth reading - just for the sake of sampling the narrative of the dutiful butler, Gabriel Betteridge, the always-entertaining narrator of Part 1.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel with great staying power. Aside from the hypnotic pulse of the narrative itself, we might be tempted to think of it as primarily a "plot-driven" novel, full of twists and turns, populated by a slew of memorable characters to be sure, individuals for the most part either broadly sketched or overshadowed by events. But among these personages,  the emotional centerpiece of the story remains the eminently plausible, tirelessly vindictive, relentless "settler of scores," the one and only: Madame Defarge.

So Long to April

Body, Soul and Immortality

If, in keeping with traditional metaphysics (i.e. Aristotle), the soul is the "form" of the body,  ergo, the mysterious source of all motion, growth and development within a particular body; and, if the soul also "inhabits" a body (as an "enlivening breath" of sorts) so as to provide the energy or "active principle" that accounts for whatever possible states the body can assume; or, similarly, taking the more modern understanding of "mind" (from Descartes) as a repository for thoughts/impressions which cannot be reduced entirely to mere physical responses,  then the big question becomes: what exactly would it mean for the soul to exist on its own, apart from the body, given that all "experiences" as such (thoughts, moods, feelings, sensations, memories, etc.)  either share a bodily element, make reference to a body or depend upon a body for their formation??? It's a difficult problem to be sure, for those of us who resist materialist conclusions... But can the "separated soul" go on to enjoy "new experiences" of its own apart from the body? This is where metaphysics becomes speculative to the extreme - ignoring Kant's line about "no (particular) thoughts without sense impressions." In other words, how does something happen to you apart from a bodily medium? Well....there could be other mediums I suppose but what would they "look" like - literally? Or feel like? Or sound like? Or smell like? Get the idea?  This quandary accounts for why so many people of faith speak of a resurrected body in place of a mere soul on its own - sans body.

Nobodaddy Revisited

Lest anyone misunderstand...my intentions here are rather simple and straightforward,  if somewhat experimental... and far (very far) from wanting to come across as impious or derogatory. The following is simply an attempt to unpack an experience that many of us have had and continue to have, which is quite existential, but not always gleeful or inspiring. I refer to it simply as "that existential feeling" (with emphasis on the word "feeling" as opposed to a "logical conclusion" based on "empirical evidence")  of being "alone among the elements," of having been cut off from any consistent form of divine protection, of being "abandoned" and "forsaken" -  made vulnerable to the [autonomous] forces of Nature. Or as Simone Weil would say, made beholden to the "gravity" of blind necessity, prey to accidents and random disasters, fodder for "extremes of heat and cold" - as if we had expected some better deal...(yeah, I get it)...but yet we do expect a better deal. Like Job before us or the author of Ecclesiastes, or King Lear on the Heath, like William Blake (see prior post), Matthew Arnold, Alfred Lord Tennyson, even Charles Darwin, along with many prior poets and countless slaves, we've experienced that weird, awkward, one-way dialogue, that "Nobodaddy moment," that strange "conversation" with the abyss.  We've undergone our angry interrogation/denunciation of the deus absconditus  -  the non-responsive agency, the absence-in-place-of-a-hoped-for presence, the void that we cling to like a person,  our ever-absent, silent interlocutor, who is not sitting above the clouds watching over us, is not apparently keeping tabs on us, has no dealings with us,  no correspondence with us, cannot hear us, does not heed our cries, cannot intervene on our behalf or send signs and omens, or make amends for past injustices, neither wishes us well or ill, cannot remember us or compile facts about us, provides no response or condolence, is not cognizant or awake or sentient, offers us only ambiguous silence and a blank (invisible) stare from the great beyond. Granted it's hard to feel safe with someone like that not watching over you...although many millions of people nowadays feel relatively nonplussed by it all (or so they claim, or so I hear), but the good news for the rest of us who do agonize over these matters, as I believe we should, as I believe we must, in order to become worthy of calling ourselves truly religious-minded creatures,  is that by sweeping aside this idolatrous expectation - of a deity poised to step in and tamper with the outcome of every waking moment,  ready to prevent us from misteps, errors, failures, confusions, miseries and regrets, there on call to chase away the ghouls or else bind up our hurts, and give us unambiguous moral guidance and support every step of the way as we believe He should (!), one can (perhaps, just maybe, and with some degree of probability) make room for some far-off preliminary to a correspondence with the one true G __ d with whom a relationship of genuine concern (both ways) may actually be envisioned.

The Calamitous 14th Century

The 1300s - a turbulent century, but one that is worth remembering and re-visiting - thanks to brilliant writer, historian and prose stylist: Barbara Tuchman.