goethe, julian, faulkner, and clark gable ~

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen:
whatever you say to them,
they translate it into their own language,
and forthwith it means something entirely different.

~ Goethe

~ * ~

i'm reading Julian of Norwich sort of on the side of everything else. just as a daily meditation thing. it's been very cool. i ought to share some of the bits and fritters ~ if i stop being too lazy to type them, i will.

~ * ~

for the last two days i've been trying to sit down and write an outline, but i just don't feel like doing it. there's such a bunch of marbles rolling around in my head at the moment (which, i suppose is better than it being empty ~ but it makes concentrating on work rather difficult).

i have been circling around The Unvanquished like a vulture around a dead mule. i keep meaning to pick it up to read it, but it seems to ask so much energy of me. so i poke it with a stick on the edge of my desk and that's about the extent of our relationship at the moment. perhaps things will improve this weekend.

ruminating on Faulkner, i wanted to post a couple things. first, a piece of his writing from his first novel Soldier's Pay which is so ripely bad it's encouraging to us lesser mortals (there is hope, never fear), and second, an amusing anecdote i came across at William Faulkner on the Web.

first, the quote from the book:

Mahon was asleep on the veranda and the other three sat beneath the tree on the lawn, watching the sun go down. At last the reddened edge of the disc was sliced like a cheese by the wistaria-covered lattice wall and the neutral buds were a pale agitation against the dead afternoon. Soon the evening star would be there above the poplar tip, perplexing it, immaculate and ineffable, and the poplar was vain as a girl darkly in an arrested passionate ecstasy. Half of the moon was a coin broken palely near the zenith and at the end of the lawn the first fireflies were like lazily blown sparks from cool fires.

wow. it's so purple it glows. i love the disc being sliced like a cheese. the image is untintentionally hilarious. and then after it's a slice of cheese, it becomes a "coin broken palely" (palely ~ wow). i don't mean to tear him down, but this is just amazingly awful writing (and he would have agreed, i think).

and then the anecdote, which is very amusing:

In 1932 Faulkner went dove hunting with Howard Hawks and a friend of his, an actor named Clark Gable. Hawks began talking with Faulkner about books, during which Gable remained silent. Finally, Gable asked Faulkner who he thought were the best living writers. After a moment, Faulkner answered, "Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, Thomas Mann, John Dos Passos, and myself."

Gable paused for a moment and said, "Oh, do you write?"

"Yes, Mr. Gable," Faulkner said. "What do you do?"

and all of this just a mindless exercise in avoiding writing that outline.

i guess i ought to go do that.

: o p