Sorta sunny day
Just heard a group playing live from Bumbershoot, on one of our local purportedly public radio stations, KEXP: Mackelmore. Hip hop, and kind of moody; interesting sound.
Usual wanderings this afternoon, with thunder clouds threatening everywhere around us. We watched a Nova program on "supertwisters," and note how similar the storms look to the ones lining up along the mountains here. So far, we don't seem to have whatever the still unknown final element is that triggers the funnels. Breathless muggy heat is my bet.
From a Robert Penn Warren essay on William Faulkner, circa 1946:
"If respect for the human is the central fact of Faulkner's work, what makes that fact significant is that he realizes and dramatizes the difficulty of respecting the human. Everything is against it, the savage egotism, the blank appetite, stupidity and arrogance, even virtues sometimes, the misreading of our history and tradition, our education, out twisted loyalties. That is the great drama, however, the constant story. His hatred of 'modernism' - and we must quote the word to give it his special meaning - arises because he sees it as the enemy of the human, as abstraction, as mechanism, as irresponsible power, as the cipher on the ledger or the curve on a graph."
While re-reading his novel "All the King's Men" not long ago, I was repeatedly struck by the timeless truth in his words. The same resonance hit with some of the words above, only they seem to apply to the people destroying the US right now; and it isn't a edifying "great drama" when you're actually living through it.
Usual wanderings this afternoon, with thunder clouds threatening everywhere around us. We watched a Nova program on "supertwisters," and note how similar the storms look to the ones lining up along the mountains here. So far, we don't seem to have whatever the still unknown final element is that triggers the funnels. Breathless muggy heat is my bet.
From a Robert Penn Warren essay on William Faulkner, circa 1946:
"If respect for the human is the central fact of Faulkner's work, what makes that fact significant is that he realizes and dramatizes the difficulty of respecting the human. Everything is against it, the savage egotism, the blank appetite, stupidity and arrogance, even virtues sometimes, the misreading of our history and tradition, our education, out twisted loyalties. That is the great drama, however, the constant story. His hatred of 'modernism' - and we must quote the word to give it his special meaning - arises because he sees it as the enemy of the human, as abstraction, as mechanism, as irresponsible power, as the cipher on the ledger or the curve on a graph."
While re-reading his novel "All the King's Men" not long ago, I was repeatedly struck by the timeless truth in his words. The same resonance hit with some of the words above, only they seem to apply to the people destroying the US right now; and it isn't a edifying "great drama" when you're actually living through it.
posted by isabelita at 2:56 PM
2 Comments:
Isa,
I may have to pull that one off the shelf again for a new read.
Blog on and happy labor day.
And a merry labor day to you too, 'spike! Oh, I'm really appreciating Mr. Penn Warren. the current piece I'm reading is dated 1956, and he's gone down south during the civil rights disturbances to sound out people. He grew up in Tennessee, and these southerners he ws talking to are quesitoning his origins...as in, where you from, boy?
Yessum, kathyr! Let's pound some snouts at the trough!
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