RIP Cormac Mc Carthy (1933- 20230

[Danik 2016]

Today at 89.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/06/13/cormac-mccarthy-novelist-dead/

[tailor STATELY]

Sorry to hear... never read him, but did watch the movie adaptation for No Country for Old Men. RIP.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Danik 2016]

Another side of Cormac Mc Carthy:
https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/

[Sancho]

Ya know, I was sort of haphazardly reading my news feed today when a. New Yorker article about Cormack McCarthy came up. It was by another writer— Ed Caesar. So I was reading along, enjoying the piece, not realizing it was an obituary. Ed wrote mainly about the border trilogy and his insights about it and how it influenced his his own writing and his life. I suppose if I’d’ve read the full header that said - postscript - it would’ve clued me in.

RIP Cormack McCarthy

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/cormac-mccarthys-narrative-wisdom

[Sancho]

Interesting, SFI article, Danik

[tailor STATELY]

Both fascinating articles :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Danik 2016]

The article about language was posted in another forum.I myself have only watched the film No Country for Old Men.

[Sancho]

I thought this was good. It’s from a review of his latest books, The Passenger and Stella Maris, by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic. It speaks to the language as well as the style of Cormac McCarthy:

“The weirdness of McCarthy’s style is hard to overstate. He abjures quotation marks and most commas and apostrophes, so even his text looks denuded and desertlike, with the remaining punctuation sprouting intermittently, like creosote bushes. (I once compared an uncorrected proof of Blood Meridian with the finished book. I found that he’d struck just a couple of commas from the final text. That amused me: Looks good, McCarthy must have decided. But still too much punctuation.) his language is archaic. Characters speak untranslated Spanish and, in The Passenger, a bit of German. The omniscient narrator makes no concession to readers unfamiliar with 19th-century saddlery, obscure geographical terminology, and desert botany.

The narration therefore registers as omniscient in both a literary and theological sense—a voice of a merciless God, speaking in tones and language meant for his own purposes and not for ours. …”

[Danik 2016]

You must have read my mind. I think you are the only active user who read Mc Carthy and I hoped you would find a good citation by him or about him.

[Sancho]

I haven’t read all of his books or for that matter his latest two books — The Passenger and Stella Maris. I bought them both in a boxed set as soon as they were published, but I was waiting for the right time to read them…probably the dead of winter. I gotta be in the right mental place to read McCarthy, and it doesn’t come around too often.

Anyway one of the things I like about his writing is the omniscient narrator that Graeme Wood described as — “a voice of a merciless God, speaking in tones and language meant for his own purposes and not for ours.” I took it another way. I took it as McCarthy respecting his readers. He didn’t feel the need to explain to us “19th century saddlery, obscure geographical terminology, and desert botany.” He just laid it out there and expected us to do the homework. McCarthy’s fans don’t want to be spoon fed.

Here’s a link to the full review by Graeme Wood:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/cormac-mccarthy-the-passenger-stella-maris-book-review/672234/

[bounty]

You must have read my mind. I think you are the only active user who read Mc Carthy and I hoped you would find a good citation by him or about him.

haven't peeked at the rest of the thread, just this post. I read no country for old men some years ago. I don't remember enough to say exactly why not, but I didn't like McCarthy's writing style and based on that, probably wouldn't read another of his books.

im also reminded from some years ago---there was a poster on the forum who seemed to be incredibly well-read and really good when it came to literary criticism (he was also insufferable, obnoxious and insulting and got banned); he was a huge fan and if I remember rightly, thought blood meridian was fantastic. I think sometimes it shows up on "books to read" lists.

[Danik 2016]

In another forum someone commented about the complexity or his language. "Mc Carthy's fans don't want to be spoon fed is a good answer."

[Danik 2016]

I didn't read him at all, Bounty . I don't like so much violence but he seems to be one of US' greatest authors.

[Sancho]

No doubt about it, Danik, there’s a lot of violence in McCarthy’s books, Blood Meridian in particular, extreme violence, but never gratuitous violence. Harold Bloom said it took him three tries to finish Blood Meridian due to the violence. Then he decided it was part of the Western Literary Canon. Many readers find the violence to be too much. Blood Meridian was the first of his books I read. An army buddy of mine gave it to me with his highest recommendation. Knowing this guy, I think he liked it because of the violence.

[Danik 2016]

When I read Faulkner, I thought I had reached the maximum of violence possible, Sancho, but I was wrong. Here in Brazil we have one novel about th drug traffic in a community of Rio de Janeiro, today canonical, that was later made into a film, that´s year's Brazilian indication for the Oscar. Perhaps you know it: It´s Cidade de Deus (City of God) by Paulo Lins. I started reading it, but when I came to a killing scene involving a baby I felt I had enough.
That doesn´t hinder these books being canonical. Sadly this kind of violence is very present in both our countries.

[Sancho]

Speaking of baby killing…

I’m aware of the Lin book, Danik, but I haven’t read it. I believe they made a movie based on it, but I haven’t seen the movie either.

We do indeed live in violent times, eh Danik? There’s been so many mass shootings here in the USA it’s got everybody jumpy. Nowadays if a car backfires, people on the sidewalk hit the ground and cover their heads, like soldiers in a combat zone.

I don’t have that much experience in Brazil, but back in the 00s I was going to Rio semi-regularly. We usually stayed at a hotel in Leblon near Ipanema beach. One day we were in the van going from the airport to the hotel and the driver wasn’t taking to usual route, so I asked him why we weren’t taking the freeway (there’s an elevated highway that goes over several favelas). The driver said it wasn’t a good day to take that road. He said a couple of gangs in the favelas were shooting back and forth across the elevated highway. Ah, well then, good route choice, I said.

As I recall in Blood Meridian the Judge Holden character kills a small Indian child after befriending him, playing with him, and carrying him around on horseback for a while. It was brutal, not so unlike the brutality Native American peoples suffered at the hands of European settlers.

It brought to mind another book by a writer who lives just up the road from where McCarthy lived — John Nichols. I believe McCarthy lived in Santa Fe and Nichols lives in Taos. Anyway American Blood is a novel about a young man’s experience in the Vietnam War, the violence he experienced there, and then the violence he had to deal with when he tried to settle back in to civilian life in New Mexico, which was every bit as virulent as in the war. I believe this book also dealt with a child murder. I suppose, like McCarthy, Nichols is making the argument that violence is part of the “human condition.”

If a writer wants to evoke intense emotion in his readers, all he has to do is kill a few little kids, or innocent animals, or a combination of both. The McCarthy book you and I discussed on another thread, Child of God, had a vivid scene where a mentally retarded child was given a bird to play with and the child promptly chews off one of the bird’s legs. The child’s mother is horrified, but Lester, the man who gave the toddler the bird, empathizes with him and and says something like - he just done it so it wouldn’t run off. Weird, there’s extreme violence, murder, and necrophilia in that book, but what I remember most is that kid mutilating that bird.

Speaking of slip-ups in moral judgment, what could be worse than child murder? Except maybe killing one’s own child. And what does it take for a text to be included in the western canon anyway? Since so many canonical books were influenced by the by the ancient Hebrews, whenever I read about a child murder in literature I immediately think of Abraham and Isaac. In the Bible story Yahweh gives Abraham a test by convincing him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Moriah. (A real dick-move on Yahweh’s part if you ask me) For anyone who’s unfamiliar with Genesis, and at the risk of spoiling the story, I’ll set your mind at ease by mentioning that at the last second Isaac gets a stay of execution by an angel and Abraham winds up sacrificing a ram instead — good for Isaac, bad for the ram.

At any rate, for anyone squeamish about violence, baby killing, and stuff like that, it might be wise to avoid books with Of God in the title: City Of God, Child Of God. Another signifier of violence might be if Blood is in the title: Blood Meridian, American Blood.

So right now I’m reading a wonderful book, which so far isn’t violent at all, quite the opposite in fact: The Night Watchman: A Novel, by Louise Erdrich. It’s set in North Dakota on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation and is loosely about the US government’s attempts to dissolve the sovereignty of the Indian Nations at that time. It’s the first book by Ms Erdrich I’ve read, and I’ve gotta say, I like her style.

[Danik 2016]

Yes, Sancho! The movie based on the book received four Oscar indications:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_God_(2002_film)
In late years one of the worst kind of mass shootings started to become usua here too, besides the other kind, the school shotting. Only this week, a guy shooted two schoolkids in a school in Paraná. He would have done still more harm, if a man hadn´t come from the outside and immobilized him by feigning that he was a policeman. Later the murder was found dead in his cell, suposedly he killed himself.

I am curious about Louise Erdrich. She was praised at what I call the Noble guessing forum.

Presently I am reading Gold Dust by Ibrahim al-Koni. It´s a desert story about the relationship between a man and his camel and would so belong to our nature or animal stories thread. Very, very good! I tell you Sancho, al-Koni is the only author I know able to do full justice to the camel.

[Sancho]

Sounds like Gold Dust is something I’d like to read. I’m gonna put it on the list. I see there’s an English translation, which is nice because I don’t think I’ll try the Arabic.

As for The Night Watchman, it’s a novel I’ve been enjoying immensely so far. However I may have jumped the gun in my earlier assessment. It’s much more directly related that I first realized to the US Government’s Indian Termination Policies of the mid 20th century. These policies were couched in paternalistic terms towards American Indians and fashioned after The Emancipation Proclamation the 19th century. A character of the novel rightfully asks - They want to emancipate us from what? Being Indians?

At any rate, the writer weaves together a fascinating story and the character development is superb. To name a few:

Thomas Wazhashk, the night watchman and tribal elder who takes point on resistance to the Indian termination policy

Patrice Paranteau (Pixie), Thomas’s niece, a strong young woman who goes to Minneapolis to find her sister. She hates her childhood nickname, Pixie, and tries to get everyone to call her Patrice, but you know how sticky nicknames can be. A line from a Beatles tune kept popping up in my head: Her name was McGill and she called herself Lil but everyone knew her as Nancy

The names are memorable: Zhaanat, Juggie Blue, Wood Mountain, Joe Wobble… and many more.

There’s a chapter about a boxing match between Wood Mountain and Joe Wobble (a Chippewa Indian and a white farmer) that would make a good entry in the Sports Desk thread.

I can recommend this book without reservation (no pun intended).

[Danik 2016]

I think you will like Gold Dust. I am reading in in English translated by Elliot Cotta. Don´t know it there is any other translation, but this one flows well. The story is interspersed with citations of wise men, but that sounds natural like a local mood of story telling.
So that´s how it starts:

"For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again."

There seem to be several editions, my cover is different from this one:
https://www.amazon.com.br/Gold-Dust-Ibrahim-al-Koni/dp/9774167392

[Danik 2016]

Coming back later for the Indians!

[Danik 2016]

Your Book sounds inviting Sancho. You know in Brazil politics for the Indians have been disastrous from the beginning of colonization. It does n´t help that they today live as small decimated impoverished tribes on territories that have been promised them but are coveted by agriculturists and illegal miners. Things got specially terrible in the Bolsonaro era. About a mouth after he had been elected the present President Lula received a cry for help of the Yanomamis up in Roraima. The children were dying from illnesses and famine, because the miners had poisoned the rivers with Mercury. The Indians became utterly helpless. The government resorted to emergency actions, like creating an emergency hospital and distributing food, but the difficult part of it is the expulsion of the illegal miners, who keep coming back.
We don´t have as yet many Indian authors. One of them is Daniel Munduruku, who has got the Jabutí, the most important Brazilian book award. He has some of his stories translated into English:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Munduruku

Fun fact: Presently he works as an actor of the soap Ópera "Terra e Paixão"( Land and Passion).

[Sancho]

I like the idea in your quote from Gold Dust, Danik. It seems to speak to an equivalency between the man’s relationship with the camel and vice versa — they’re both in it together, each relies on the other and their collective survival depends on the both of them. That is to say camel is not a service animal. Anyway that’s what I gleaned from the quote.

The language the translator uses seems to be an archaic English that sounds a little like the King James Bible, which used an older version of English than the people of the day used, probably so as to signal the book is an ancient text. One of the great strengths of McCarthy’s novels is that he uses language from the period of the setting. Also he leans into a sort of religious tone at times in his writing for a specific effect.

Also now that I’m reading mostly on Kindle, I can download the book without searching the selves of bookstores or waiting my turn at the library. It’s something I have mixed feelings about. Spending time at used bookstores is one of life’s simple pleasures.

Speaking of religion and creation mythologies, it comes up in The Night Watchman. The night watchman’s surname is Wazhashk, which means muskrat in Chippewa. Every year he’d have his father, Biboon, tell him the story of his family name:


“In the beginning,” said Biboon, “the world was covered with water. The Creator lined up the animals who were the best divers. First the Creator sent down Fisher, the strongest. But Fisher came up gasping, couldn’t find the bottom. Next Mang, the loon, ducked under the way they do.” Biboon curved his hand. “Loon tried. But failed.” Thomas nodded in appreciation, loving the gestures he remembered from childhood. “The Hell-diver flashed into the water, bragging it would succeed. That Hell-diver pulled itself deep down, and down. But no!” Biboon waited, took in a deep breath. “Last the humble water rat. The Creator called on that one. Wazhashk. The little fellow dived down. He took a long time, a very long time, and then finally Wazhashk floated to the top. He was drowned but his paw was clenched. The Creator unfolded Wazhashk’s webbed hands. He saw that the muskrat had carried up just a little off the bottom. From that tiny paw’s grip of dirt, the Creator made the whole earth.”

It’s a sweet story. In the novel it’s juxtaposed to a creation story from another religious tradition. (I’ll probably butcher this, but here goes.) The Book Of Mormon describes an ancient tribe of Hebrews who’d made their way to North America. These people split into two tribes — Nephites and Lamanites — and proceed to bang heads for a couple of centuries. The two tribes are easy to tell apart because the Lamanites have darker skin, which was curse put on them by God for their general wickedness. (That part of the story hasn’t aged well) Anyway things go back and forth for a while and eventually the Lamanites become righteous and defeat the now-evil Nephites, but they still have the curse of dark skin, and that’s where Native Americans come from — ta-da. Eventually the righteous children of Abraham will become united under the one true god, the Lamanites’ skin will lighten up, and they’ll all go to the good place, and that’ll be that.

Fast forward to the 1950s and the focus of the novel — The Indian Termination Policies. In 1953 the US Government’s House Concurrent Resolution 108 laid out a policy for dissolution of the sovereignty of the Indian Nations within the borders of The United States, and the assimilation of those people into the wider American population. This dovetailed nicely with the story in The Book Of Mormon. Hence, no doubt informed by his faith, a huge supporter of HCR 108 was Utah Senator Arthur Watkins. Native Americans by contrast (who’d never signed up to the Mormon agenda in large numbers) strenuously resisted HCR 108.

The Hopi Indians of the Southwestern United States have a simple yet beautiful philosophy — Be good to people and try to understand things. The origin story in The Book Of Mormon, I think, tries to do this. In my opinion it fails, but clearly it tries. Concerning Native Americans, the Catholics struggled as well. Shortly after Columbus sailed the blue and “discovered” America, the Catholic Church tried to make sense of all these newly discovered people that were not mentioned in their holy book. A Papal Bull was released stating that these people were actually people (not something less) and should be "Subjugated —*and brought to the faith." The Pope essentially told Europeans it was their duty to conquer and convert indigenous peoples. He believed it was the way to “care for their souls.” A damned arrogant idea in my opinion, but he thought he was doing the right thing.

I’ll go even farther back to the ancient Hebrew creation story, which doesn’t exactly square with the Chippewa creation story where Wazhashk the muskrat swims to bottom of the sea and finds land, but it is nonetheless an attempt by a people to make sense of their world, and it starts out the same — In the beginning…

I suppose where the Genesis story goes sideways for me is where God gives Man dominion over all the animals. That’s a right we don’t have in my mind. It’s a dangerous idea that has caused a huge amount of pain and destruction on this planet. And that brings me back to the story of the man and the camel being on equal footing. I’m not sure where Gold Dust goes, but I’m planning to read it next.

[Danik 2016]

Sorry, Sancho, the citation above is incomplete. It is from Ecclesiastes 3: 19-20 and so it is very possible that the translator or the author himself used the Saint James Bible.

As to the equality, as far as I have gone, page 270 something there is not the ideal equality between man and beast, we both cherish. The camel belongs to the young man and he takes the main decisions for both, but in some decisive situations the camel is able to impose his will. More than that I'm not going to say.

That´s a nice story of the beginning of the world and nicely told. There must have been a great flood once, because it somehow keeps showing up in foundation myths of very different people.

As for The Book of Mormon, do you know that tailor is a Mormon minister? I don´t know if he is reading this thread but he probably would enjoy "talking" with you about the book. Your summing up reminds me of the original story of Sem, Cam and Japhet, as the three main tribes that populated the ancient world.
I'll have to interrupt now, but I'll be back later.

[Sancho]

Ah, okay. I do kind of get that vibe from him. I’ve never chatted with him about it, but Tailor seems to be good ambassador of his faith. As for El Sancho, I’m pretty sure he’s a practicing heretic. In a different time and place I’d’a been burned at the stake.

[Danik 2016]

We all would, Sancho. We are all lucky not to be contemporary to the Inquisition. Remember the wonderful chapter in the Quixote, where the books are burnt. Cervantes mocked the Inquisition to its face.

Very interesting these combination of Indian History and Religion in your book. After being relegated to the background what culminated in the four terrible Bolsonaro years, the Indians are claiming for their rights now, which include in some parts nourishment and health succor.
And for the first time they have gained a own Ministry, with a very well informed and realistic Minister.
I have had to interrupt Gold Dust for some days but I hope to take it up again today.

[Sancho]

Well, it’s comforting to know that I’ll be in good company as those hot flames are licking me. I remember well the book burning chapter in Don Quixote. It wasn’t lost on me that Cervantes had the village priest as the most enthusiastic book burner.

We just had a landmark Supreme Court case here that ruled in favor of giving Native American families preferential consideration in placing Native American children with them for adoption. The case was raised by non-native families who thought it was racist to give preferential treatment to certain families based on their ethnicity. The court disagreed with only two judges dissenting (Thomas and Alito). It was a bit of surprise to court watchers based on the current makeup of the Supreme Court, and a rare win for indigenous Americans. Also it was the impetus behind me reading Louise Erdrich’s book.

[Danik 2016]

I am very glad of it, Sancho. Indian children when adult may feel that thei´ve been cut of their roots. And usually Indians have less legal defensors as the other parties (when they have defense at all). Here the main ploblem is with the definite assignation of the areas they occupy, because they are areas coveted by the great landlords and the illegal miners.

[Sancho]

Yep, that was a good decision by the court and one to be celebrated by Native American families. However I’m sure it feels like one step forward and two steps back for the tribes. Last week the Navajo Nation lost their case in the Supreme Court for water rights in the Colorado River Basin. The Navajo Reservation is on a particularly arid piece of land in the Southwest US, and they are in an existential crisis due to lack of water. There’s a lot of reasons they’re running out of water — historic drought, climate change, too much agriculture upstream of their reservation — but mostly it comes down to too many people and too little water in the desert Southwest. By too many people, I don’t mean The Navajo; they’ve been there forever. Too many people have moved there in the past 100 years. The desert can’t support all those swimming pools and tomato plants. Anyway the Navajo asked the court to define the water rights that were implicit in the 19th century treaty establishing their reservation. The court said — Nope. You’re on your own. Deal with it.

One glimmer of hope for the Navajo was a dissenting opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch. He broke with the other conservative judges to side with the court’s liberal judges (and the Navajo). He wrote:


Where do the Navajo go from here? To date, their efforts to find out what water rights the United States holds for them have produced an experience familiar to any American who has spent time at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Navajo have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to help them, only to be told (repeatedly) that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another.

[Danik 2016]

It´s a shame. I hope this gets mended in the future.

Here are still worse issues, regions werde the Indians starved and got ill because the Mercury of the mining infected the rivers and they couldn´t fish animore. Things are starting to look a bit better I hope they keep mending.

[Sancho]

I just read today that Bolsonaro is banned from running in any more elections until 2030. So we can all breathe a little easier for a few years…literally. I’ve been watching the deforestation of the Amazon with a sense of controlled horror, the Amazon being a major source of oxygen for the planet.

And agreed, Danik, mercury poisoning and starvation is worse, and tailings from mining can foul the soil for generations. This kind of stuff keeps happening and inevitably the people who suffer from the pollution are not the people who did the polluting. It’s infuriating.

In The Night Watchman novel there’s a scene where several of the women are making a blanket for a baby by cutting off a small square of their own blankets. It’s an indication of their poverty that they each only own one blanket. Here’s an exchange between Patrice and Wood Mountain:


“You can always get army blankets free at the mission.”
“I know,” said Patrice. “But Zhaanat doesn’t like those. She says they have diseases in them.”
“A lot of old people think that.”
“She’s not old.”
“But she’s from an older time.”

They’re talking indirectly about the smallpox epidemic of the 19th century that destroyed many Indian communities in the northern plains and Great Lakes regions. Smallpox would kill around 30% of a European population, but it’d kill upwards of 90% of a Native American population because smallpox hadn’t existed in North America until Europeans brought it here, hence there was no natural immunity in indigenous populations.

Many people, evidently including Zhaanat, believe the US army gave Indians smallpox-infected blankets in order to control the Indian population, an early form of biological warfare.

[Danik 2016]

Thanks for mentioning the Bolsonaro trial. I was itching to put up the news here, but the site has been sharper on politics the last year. So just some information (I didn´t read the foreign papers, they usually are behind paywall now (except the Guardian). There are numerous complaints against Bolsonaro, there probably will be more trials but in this case the judged issue was an official meeting he held with foreign ambassadors specially to deride the Brazilian electronic voting system. The judges chose to judge it not as a isolated event, but as an event in the process that ultimately led to the invasions and destructions of the official seats of parliament, high justice and the presidential palace in 8. January. As for the near future one has to wait what is going to happen now, because the opposition in parliament, which sadly is the majority, is going to propose a law, that will create an amnesty so far as I understood it for all electoral faults and crimes commited by politicians. If this law prospers in parliament, Bolsonaro will benefit from it. At the best this sentence will affect only the elections of 2026.

The situation of the Brazilian Indians is indeed very bad. They usually are small, impoverished groups which live on coveted territories. Sometimes they can´t even fend for themselves anymore because their natural resources through fishing and hunting have been cut off or destroyed. They have been abandoned by the government for many years. In February there was a cry for help from Roraima, about children starving to dead, and general sickness. Lula went there with several ministers. They had to distribute food, install a medical tent because the one hospital of the region had to attend several cities. And the most ill had to be brought by plane or helicopter to the capital. Most difficult of all, the illegal miners have to be incessantly repelled by air, land and water, because they keep comming back.

I have read about this too, Sancho, allbeit not specifically about smallpox.Accidental or intentional there are so many ways to eradicating the Indians.

Which reminds me of a terrible situation that happened here during Covid Pandemics. I don´t remember in which state it happened any more, neither which tribe was affected by it. Before the vaccine the Indians caught the infection very easily, specially the babies. And they became desperate not only because the babies died, but because they couldn´t perform there dead rituals which involved keeping the body unburied for about a month so that the soul could get used to it´s new situation ( and I believe also the family of the dead). For these Indians there people died twice.

[Sancho]

Very interesting information, Danik. I was unaware Covid was harder on indigenous peoples. The Night Watchman touches on burial rituals for The Chippewa. One of the characters dies and the community goes through an elaborate process of burying him. The family is happy that Thomas (the night watchman) is taking care of it because he’ll do it the traditional way. Thomas, however, is not sure. He knows from his father that in the old days Chippewa didn’t bury their dead in the earth where the worms would eat them. They put the dead high in a tree so the birds could pick the body apart and spread it to the sky.

As for the moderators, I’ve found they tend to be pretty reasonable around here, and pretty good at keeping things civil. They seem to be okay with current events, but will shut down a discussion that’s devolving towards political head-banging and hurt feelings.

Momma don’t allow no political head-banging around here.

Reminds me of a song:
Momma Don’t Allow
This version by Pokey Lafarge and Friends

https://youtu.be/QqmGJcGZhZU

We don’t care what Momma don’t ‘low, gonna political head-bang anyhow

Man! Gotta get down to New Orleans! When you’re feeling low, head on down to Tipitina’s on Tchoupitaoula Street. It’ll cure what ails you.

So there’s a few periodicals I’ve been reading for most of my adult life. Just recently I bought an Apple Plus subscription and now I have access to huge number of magazines. It’s broadened my world view, I think. It’s certainly got me reading about world events from different perspectives. In my humble opinion, Brazil’s last general election was cause for optimism, Turkey’s was not.

[Danik 2016]

Enjoyed the music, Sancho, even if I couldn´t understand the lyrics so well without cc.

I like the considerate moderation, but maybe the site wants to avoid trouble. I think something that distinguishes a true Litnetter is having own opinions and sticking to them."We don’t care what Momma don’t ‘low, gonna political head-bang anyhow". Lol!

First time a read about a burial in the trees. There is a beautiful poem by Manuel de Barros about a grand father that lives in the crown on a tree and then dies in it but I didn´t find any translation in the net of it.

I also love to read what happens in the world from different perspectives. Sadly most internet newspapers are behind paywalls now.

[Danik 2016]

I had to leave the poor camel in the desert under very precarious circumstances. My eyes aren´t that well these days so I´m reading very slowly. But yesterday I finally finished "Gold Dust" which is actually a short read.The story of a son of the desert and his camel is really an intense adventure. The narrative and the reflections of the narrator which reveal the customs and the system of faith are intelligently blended. I liked the story but didn't like the ending, though fitting tto the rest of the story.

As it says in the Translators Afterword:

"Gold Dust takes place in a world of contrasts—desolate rock plateaus, lush oases, and far-flung pastures abounding in mythical flora and fauna, all surrounded by endless wastes traversed solely by camel herders, dervishes, and the occasional caravan. The focus of this novel is not the desert itself, but rather the lives of desert dwellers as they struggle against forces beyond their control."

There is not an actual equality between man and beats, but the camel is represented as a being with feelings and inclinations, who, like his owner, fights as good as he can for what he wants. And his voice makes itself heard at all the critical moments of his life:"Aw-a-a-a-a-a-a".

[Sancho]

I finished “Gold Dust” a couple of days ago, Danik, but I didn’t post anything because I knew you had taken a break from it and I didn’t want to spoil the ending, which, as you know, turned out to be brutal.

I thought the piebald’s character was developed about as well as the Tuareg nomad, Ukhayyad. I also thought the story had an old timey feel about it, part fable and part parable. The ram who saved Ukhayyad from his pursuers felt like a fable, and Ukhayyad killing Dudu felt like a parable, maybe based on the proverb — Seek revenge and you should dig two graves.

Anyway the part of the book I enjoyed the most was exactly what you presented it as, Danik — a deep, codependent relationship between a man and a camel. It made me smile how, no matter where the camel was or in what condition, he always found his way back to Ukhayyad. I liked how Ukhayyad matured during the story. At first he almost objectified the camel, but by the end he wanted what was best for the camel, for the camel’s sake. I also really liked the descriptions of the Sahara and the people, the animals, and the plants that inhabit it.

[Danik 2016]

I'm glad you enjoyed the book which you must have read in a few days.

" I also thought the story had an old timey feel about it, part fable and part parable."

I felt that too, because of the archaic relationships in an archaic landscape it depicts. I haven't finished the afterword yet but I wondered why this was called modern Arabic literature, with this ancient feel. Perhaps because our more recent generations, feel more acutely than the past ones, the struggle against forces, be they human or be the natural, that are out of their control.