The Cynic Librarian

now has the first issue of the Kierkegaard Carnival online.

Notes for a Novel I Never Managed to Write

[1997]

The Continual Feast

Characters:

Jeremiah Hezekiah Claiborne: Youngest of the Claiborne brothers (21, born in Nepal in 1976), resident of South Bend, WA, where he has lived since leaving college shortly after beginning his Junior year; sometime fishing boat worker, logger, bartender at the World’s End Tavern, artist, poet; lives in a studio apartment overlooking Willapa Harbor (the apartment is one of three apartments making up the second floor of a house, the first floor of which is occupied by the Mudds, the family of four who own the house; the other two apartments are inhabited by (1) Patrick Welt, an odd, (mildly autistic?) chess-playing Catholic lad who just purchased a cheap organ and is taking organ lessons and (2) Joe, a fireman who spends most of his time either at the fire station or at his girlfriend’s and so is rarely seen by Jeremiah. Jeremiah stands just under six foot, has an athletic build, black hair, sports a beard in winter which he shaves off each April Fool’s Day, suffers from Seasonal depression in the winter and tends to exist in a semi-hibernative state from late November through early February. He has been seeing Delia Swan since Sophomore year of college and is deeply in love and lust with her. They fornicate often and with abandon. Jeremiah writes erotic sonnets to her and paints images of her. He is building a treehouse in a secret place in the woods. Jeremiah vaguely believes in the God of his father (Luther, a Lutheran minister), but combines this with a kind of nature-boy zest for life, beatnik romanticism of the road, and a zen eschewing of definitions. He studies Karatedo at a dojo in Aberdeen and reads books about Zen and such. Occasionally he golfs with his uncle William Claiborne who was once a Hanford engineer and is now an Episcopalian priest in Aberdeen. Jeremiah’s mother, Elizabeth, died when he was 3 years old -- of a wasp sting in Nepal, where she and Luther and were missionaries for five years. Of his two elder brothers, Jeremiah is closest to Calvin (the middle brother, with whom he occasionally gets into trouble). His eldest brother, George, is somewhat aloof, although they have occasions of connectedness and brotherly affection.

Delia Meria Swan. Attended college with Jeremiah in Walla Walla; is from Aberdeen, where her mother works in law enforcement. Her father is absent, in Seattle somewhere (has been since she was 5; she still has the book he was reading her when he left, marked where he left off). Delia is taking a year’s leave-of-absence from college (whereas Jeremiah simply dropped out and has no intention of returning), living in her old room in the basement, in constant semi-hysterical conflict with her mother and her mother’s alcoholic boyfriend, Hank; works as a waitress at the Red Apple, hacks around the Internet at night, often stays with Jeremiah for days at a time. Is embarrassed to be living in such a backwater; wants to live a comfortable, elegant life somewhere after the fashion of Beverly Hills 90210 (her favorite TV show); she is conflicted though: in love with Jeremiah but strong misgivings about whether he will provide the life she wants.

Calvin Coolidge Claiborne. The middle of the three brothers (26); English instructor at Snohomish River Community College; a tall, dark-haired, engagingly derisive fellow, his name is the result of his father’s whimsy and sense of family history (Luther the father of Calvin; but also Calvin Coolidge was his great great uncle). He has been at SRCC since completing his MA at the University of Washington at the early age of 20 (having entered college at 16, obtained a BA at 19 followed by one year of graduate study). He is married to but recently separated from Estelle Savoy, who once attended his College Writing 101 course. They have a five-year-old son named Sid who stays with Calvin on weekends. Calvin is an atheist but believes the coherence of Christianity and western civilization in general is superior to eastern murkiness. He understands and admires his father’s and elder brother’s beliefs, but doesnt believe. He is scandalized and chagrined over Estelle’s belief that Sid is the reincarnation of a Tibetan lama. He also has violent impulses towards Terrence, Estelle’s Buddhism-teacher with whom she is probably having an affair.

Estelle Louise Savoy Claiborne. Calvin’s estranged wife; 30 years old. Gave up a life of drugs and porn movies (her moniker was “Starr 69” and she still is sometimes called by the nickname “Star”), joined AA, turned her life around, moved to from L.A. to Seattle, ended up in Everett, enrolled in courses at SRCC where she met Calvin during his first year of teaching, got pregnant by Calvin whereupon Luther was called upon to perform a wedding ceremony. During the pregnancy she attended a lecture given by Terrence McBride, an Irishman Buddhist, on “Christianity as Buddhism” and was so taken with his Irish brogue and exotic ideas that she began to take private instruction in “breathing and meditation” from him. Became convinced, due to dreams and prophetic correspondences, that the child inside her wd be the reincarnation of a great Tibetan lama who had died earlier that year. Calvin’s intransigence on this point, his unwillingness to take it seriously, has led Estelle to leave him and even to consider an affair with Terrence (her pride and dignity, which are highly developed, have thus far prevented her from succumbing to Terrence’s advances, however). She is considering taking Sid to a monastery in Nepal, where he will receive training appropriate to his destiny as a lama. Coincidentally, the monastery is near the same village where Calvin spent part of his childhood.

Siddhartha Francis Claiborne. 5 year old son of Calvin and Estelle. Likes Power Rangers, Bill Nye the Science Guy, hot wheels and model rockets. Has an entrepreneurial sensibility, is always scheming how to make money; e.g. selling seeds, lemonade stand, selling rocks. Estelle is teaching him to recite mantras and be kind to insects. Calvin is teaching him to play baseball.

George Washington Claiborne. Eldest of the brothers (30). A monk at St. Albert’s, a Benedictine abbey Near White Bluffs, WA and the Hanford nuclear site. George and several other of the monks (some of them former Hanford scientists) have formed an apostolate whereby they subcontract themselves as information specialists for the other groups working on the Hanford clean-up (in effect, they are the librarians of the clean-up effort). The monastery also has a vineyard and a cherry orchard. The monks also operate a jet-boat tour of the Hanford Reach. There is a legend of gold buried somewhere on the abbey grounds from the days when the wagon train line brought in gold from Montana to ship by riverboat from White Bluffs to Portland.

Luther Paul Claiborne. The father of Jeremiah, Calvin and George, a 58 year old Lutheran minister and widower since 1979, when his wife Elizabeth died of a toxic reaction to a wasp sting during their fifth year of missionary work in Nepal. At that time, Luther returned to the states with his three young sons and took up residence in Coeur d’Alene, ID, where he has been a pastor at Lord of Life Lutheran Church since 1980. A gruffly humorous bear of a man who holds dear the memory of his wife but doesn’t let grief slow him down. The truth is he’s a bit frenetic and could stand to slow down. Lately he has been spearheading an effort to establish a “Human Rights” collection at the local library (focusing on holocaust information) and has been receiving threatening calls from the local neo-nazi contingent.

John Peregrine Smith. Mysterious resident of Coeur d’Alene, professor of Philosophy at Gonzaga University, Internet enthusiast, dialectition, Jew? Christian? He is secretly involved in the activities of a white militia group in North Idaho but it is unclear whether he is merely trying to stir up trouble or whether he earnestly espouses the anti-federal dogma of the group.

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The Feast of Corpus Christi (May 29)

Jeremiah Claiborne lived upstairs from the Mudds. His was one of three studio apartments which occupied the upper floor of the house. Mr. Mudd was an electrician whose free time was devoted to the use of metal detector and shovel to hunt for buried treasures. Mrs. Mudd was a Mary Kay representative who drove a pink Honda Civic which she hoped someday to upgrade to a pink Cadillac.

One morning in May, Jeremiah looked out his window and saw Mrs. Mudd speeding away in her pink Honda. He had been stirred from his late-morning sleep by enraged shrieks which shaped themselves into a distinctly female hand with vivid pink fingernails clawing at the cerebral chalkboard of Jeremiah’s dream. When he sat up in his couch-bed and looked out the window, the pink Honda was halfway down the block and Mr. Mudd and the two young muddlings were standing in the yard looking sullen and stunned. Mr. Mudd was leaning on a shovel and had evidently been digging a hole in the middle of Mrs. Mudd’s rose garden, and the two children were astride their bicycles, helmets askew and looking like someone had just let the air out of their tires.

In the distance, down the hill towards the Willipa River and the harbor beyond, piles of oyster shells glistened in the sun under a sky so fair Jeremiah spontaneously entertained a vision of Aphrodite standing atop the shells, her long locks making cloudy wisps against the blue sky. Then he imagined her stubbing her toe on the sharp shells and looking up at Jeremiah, saying, “Get me off this damn pile of shells! I don’t want to play Aphrodite anymore.” The goddess had become his girlfriend Delia. Jeremiah thought perhaps he would paint her picture that way sometime. He had already painted Delia, or at least sketched her in his mind’s eye, as various and sundry goddesses, nymphs, whores, moviestars and

John Gardner a Fake?

I haven't read enough Gardner to confirm this, but I suspect this fellow (John Crowley) is onto something. For me the first sign of Gardner's going awry was that he slammed Percy's Lancelot for failing to be a "moral" book.

John Gardner was, in fact, a fake. He was a terrible immoralist who dared to write a book called "On Moral Fiction", and despite my general agreement with JM about writers sometimes writing against the person they are, that wasn't a novel, it was a screed. It's actually my belief that John Gardner sold his soul to the Devil (this would, actually make a fine story, which I don't care to write). My first intimations of something wrong came when I saw that The Sunlight Dialogues first appeared in a gorgeous edition with illustrations. Who gets illustrations in common literary fiction? Then in a bus station in Indianapolis I found on the paperback rack a copy of his multi-thousand-line epic poem "Jason and Medea." A mass market paperback? In a bus station? Who made that deal, I'd like to know? Then there was his successful descent into sloth, alcoholism, and self indulgence, a repellent figure who nonetheless got any woman he looked at, apparently, sometimes more than one at once--well it was the times, I guess, but then those huge unreadable books kept piling up, hypnotized editors continuing to publish them; he plagiarizes half his book about Chaucer and gets away with what's ruined many a rep; continues admired, honored, even revered, and then came that dark night on the lonely road in the woods when his contract was up... How's that for a Secret History?

Read more.

"The Northerner is at heart a pornographer. He is an abstract mind with a genital attached. His soul is at Harvard, a large abstract locked-in sterile university whose motto is truth but which has not discovered an important truth in a hundred years. His body lives on Forty-second Street. Do you think there is no relation between Harvard and Forty-second Street? One is the backside of the other."

And This From the World of Sports...

From the Video Music Archives II

Björk Guðmundsdóttir's Unravel was released on her third album Homogenic in 1997, but neither as single nor video. Which is strange, since to my ears it's one of the most haunting love songs ever written. A lot of other people thought so, too, and all this demand led to the Vespertine-style video released with a collection of her greatest hits in 2003 or 2004. And what a video it is. It begins with what could be yarn, though perhaps a tad gossamery for knitting. Smoke maybe? And then we have Björk's head, possibly with some of that same stuff (whatever it is) tied up in her hair. And then we see that she is hunched up, rocking back and forth, with ... something on her back, but ... er ... hmm. Well ... um ... could be a Tribble, maybe. Or maybe the white stuff is smoke, and it's an ash tray. Or maybe ... ah ... vaguely, um, sexual ... but I'm really not sure. Wouldn't want to go out on limb here. And then there's that other big thing, which also looks like a back, thrashing about, with a lot more of that white stuff - plenty of white stuff all over the place, being collected and whatnot. With a grin. Hmm. In short, I have no idea what the hell is going on here. But it's a great song. Diminished, somewhat, perhaps, by the video. But haunting.

And here is a lovely version of the song performed live at the Riverside Church. And if you wondered whether some of her incredible vocal effects were produced with the magic of studio electronics, here she is in the famous Swan Dress performing live in Japan. Incredible.

While you are away/My heart comes undone/Slowly unravels/In a ball of yarn/The devil collects it/With a grin/Our love/In a ball of yarn/He'll never return it/So when you come back/We'll have to make new love/He'll never return it/When you come back/We'll have to make new love/While you are away/My heart comes undone/Slowly unravels/In a ball of yarn/The devil collects it/With a grin/Our love, our love,/In a ball of yarn/He'll never return it/When you come back/We'll have to make new love

Happy Birthday Quin Finnegan

Webb's Thanksgiving turkey recipe

Beer Joke of the Month

Bleeding heart conservatives.

Riots in Ritzville Mark Korrektiv's 2nd Blogiversary

AP -- Ritzville, WA, Nov 19, 2006.

On Bullshit

Nice little book of popular philosophy by a former Princeton Professor. Frankfurt distinguishes between lying, which shares with truth telling a concern with facts, and bullshit, in which the question of truth is completely absent; hence absurd. I think Walker Percy would prefer this to Erich Fromm. Of course, you gotta love the title.

From the Video Music Archives

U2 apparently made two versions of Stuck in a Moment, and having just watched them both back-to-back I can say in all honesty that they're both great. The first version has some great scenes of Bono singing the song, and all the while he seems to be the one who is stuck, getting walked all over, and as far as I can tell, in need of that ambulance shown rushing through the gate several times. The second version has a great intro by John Madden, after which footage of a place kicker missing a field goal is shown over and over again on an instant replay loop. Bono is shown standing up and singing in the crowd. If I were trying to be intellectually engaging about the serious topic of midrashing music videos, I'd suggest that our technologically automated age, with all its recordings, instant replays and virtual realities, almost insures that even the best minds will become 'stuck in a moment'. And that U2 or whoever came up with this second video does a great job of showing this. Anyway, of the two versions, I think the second version makes more sense. What does Jon Webb think?

I'm not afraid/Of anything in this world/There's nothing you can throw at me/That I haven't already heard/I'm just trynna' find/A decent melody/A song that I can sing/In my own company/I never thought you were a fool/But darling, look at you. Ooh./You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight/'Cause tears are going nowhere baby/You've got to get yourself together/You've got stuck in a moment/And now you can't get out of it/Don't say that later will be better/Now you're stuck in a moment/And you can't get out of it/I will not forsake/The colors that you bring/The nights you filled with fireworks/They just left you with nothing/I am still enchanted/By the light you brought to me/I listen through your ears/Through your eyes I can see/You are such a fool/To worry like you do.. Oh/I know it's tough/And you can never get enough/Of what you don't really need now/My, oh my

One thing's for sure: that Bono is one handsome man. I think it's fair to say that at one time or another, most men have wanted to be Bono, but it's not good to be stuck in that moment, either.

Reliably Catholic

New Catholic blogger lady arrives on the scene, paying homage to Walker Percy and smelling nice.

Welcome Thomasina!

Evil Republican Elephant on Rampage

Homeless man and democratic chipmunks nearly trampled.

Jim Wallis: A Defeat for the Religious Right and the Secular Left

In this election, both the Religious Right and the secular Left were defeated, and the voice of the moral center was heard. A significant number of candidates elected are social conservatives on issues of life and family, economic populists, and committed to a new direction in Iraq. This is the way forward: a grand new alliance between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, one that can end partisan gridlock and involves working together for real solutions to pressing problems.

Read more.

I agree with this take on where the country is at right now. I balk at Mr. Wallis's title, though. I guess it makes for provocative copy, but I'm not sure it's the religious right vs. the secular left so much as the warmongering, corporate-greed-pandering right vs. the leveling-to-the-lowest-common-denominator, social-engineering, boring-sameness-desiring left. Both extremes are characterised by cynicism, lying, tunnel vision, willingness to let the ends justify the means, and attempts to manipulate the transcendant values of religion towards a narrow political agenda. Perusing the comments, it's interesting to see how many lefties were offended by the piece.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Blogs

Angelmeg is in a Flannery state of grace,
Ironic Catholic is running in place,
Cubeland Mystic simplifies in your face,
Godsbody is hunkered down in the crawl space.

Quintilian's croaking with the frogs.
These are a few of my favorite blogs.

When the dog pees
on my best clogs,
When I'm feeling sad,
I simply check in on my favorite blogs
And then I don't feel so bad!

A good word from Cloud Hands!

"Whatever feeble connection existed between their thought and their speech is made even weaker by their fear of saying the wrong thing."

As seen on the Tonight Show

Leno was collecting jokes from various people in the audience, and some teenager came up with a doozy. I paraphrase:

Teenager: Have you heard about the two Irishmen who walked out of a bar?

Leno: No, I haven't.

Teenager: Yeah, um ... could happen ...

Sherman Alexie on Starbucks and the Sonics in the Stranger

Sherman Alexie has an interesting article on just about everything, including Howard Schultz and the American Dream, a motel room in Oklahoma City, Luke Ridenour's rank in the NBA, and his own status on the totem pole of American Writers. Also includes a couple of nice observations about conversations with his father, which I think a lot of us can understand. And, perhaps because this is the Stranger, drops the F bomb a lot. A lot.

Query

One question regarding scripture has been bugging me for a long time; namely, in the account of Jesus' temptation by Satan (Matthew 4, Mark 1, and Luke 4), how exactly have we learned about these events? In Luke and Matthew we get very similar accounts. Here's Luke:

And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.

My question: where do all these details come from? If it's safe to assume that Jesus and Satan were alone out there in the desert, the account of this dual must have originated from Jesus himself. Or is there a tradition of duels with Satan by prophets that perhaps Luke and the others were drawing from? I ask because (as I have asked elsewhere), I wonder whether it isn't important to understanding that part of the Lord's Prayer in which we pray, "Lead us not into temptation". Well, I never would have thought to worry about God leading me into temptation. Shouldn't we pray to God to keep us from temptation? But that's not how Jesus tells us to pray. And no, the original Greek is no help. Nor is Pope Benedict, with whom I took up the issue here.

Another example, of course, is the story of the immaculate conception and in fact the whole narrative surrounding Mary and Joseph. And of course the finding in the temple (Luke 2:42ff), which may well not, probably did not come from Jesus himself. So these stories come to us from the very earliest community, indeed a community that predates the one that was built up around Jesus' ministry as an adult. Can anyone recommend a good book about the sources for these narratives and how they are woven together with the (much more prevalent) narrative threads of his later life? Are there apocryphal accounts of Jesus' life before his ministry? Or is all this a fool's errand?

"A view of abortion with something to offend everybody"

A good word from Godsbody!

Boob job from hell.

Dog or Cat, You Must Choose

Daughter of Eve (a month shy of three years old) was a puppy dog for Halloween. She nearly had a meltdown, however, when at the last minute she decided she didn't want to be a puppy dog but rather a kitty cat.

Finally the puppy dog was a go, though, and all was well and much candy was gathered.

This is how it is, though. You want to be a puppy dog but then that rules out being a kitty cat; and it hurts to give up that possibility, to so limit yourself.