writers | dual personalities

July 23, 2015

“Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn’t a game for knights.”*

by chuckofish

Happy birthday to Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959)–great writer and keen social commentator!

“Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.”
—The Long Goodbye (written in 1953)

Haven’t I been saying this for years?

Have a good Thursday. Read some Chandler or watch Double Indemnity (1944). Drink a gimlet.

*The Big Sleep

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July 21, 2015

One thing I don’t worry about

by chuckofish

“Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”
“Yes, every once in a while.”
“Do you know that in about thirty- five more years we’ll be dead?”
“What the hell, Robert,” I said. “What the hell.”
“I’m serious.”
“It’s one thing I don’t worry about,” I said.
“You ought to.”
“I’ve had plenty to worry about one time or other. I’m through worrying.”
“Well, I want to go to South America.”
“Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
“But you’ve never been to South America.”
“South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don’t you start living your life in Paris?”

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961), American author and journalist, was born on this day 116 years ago in Oak Park, Illinois.

This flyover son sometimes reminds me of another midwestern fisherman.

Don’t you think?

I haven’t read any Hemingway for quite a while. Perhaps it is time to dust something off. Needless to say, it is definitely time to toast old Ernesto.

And did you read this? I think ABInBev should sue!

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July 8, 2015

Mid-week reminder

by chuckofish

“A religious observance can be a wedding, a christening, a Memorial Day service, a bar mitzvah, or anything like that you might be apt to think of. There are lots of things going on at them. There are lots of things you can learn from them if you’re in a receptive state of mind. The word ‘observance’ itself suggests what is perhaps the most important thing about them.

A man and a woman are getting married. A child is being given a name. A war is being remembered and many deaths. A boy is coming of age.

It is life that is going on. It is always going on, and it is always precious. It is God that is going on. It is you who are there that is going on.

As Henry James advised writers, be one on whom nothing is lost.

OBSERVE!! There are few things as important, as religious, as that.”

–Frederick Buechner, The Faces of Jesus

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June 8, 2015

The small joys

by chuckofish

“…Hilary enjoyed himself, just as he had enjoyed himself drinking the port. Increasingly, as he got older, he enjoyed things. As his personal humility deepened, so did his awareness of the amazing bounty of God…so many things…The mellow warmth of the port, the pleasure of the game, the sight of Lucilla’s lovely old face in the firelight, and David’s fine hands holding the cards, his awareness of Margaret’s endearing simplicity, and the contentment of the two old dogs dozing on the hearth…One by one the small joys fell. Only to Hilary no joy was small; each had its own mystery, aflame with the glory of God.”

—Pilgrim’s Inn

This weekend I finished re-reading Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge, an old favorite written in 1948 about an English family after the war. It seems a bit dated now, but I found it quite satisfying and I recommend it. The fact that it and her other novels are still in print tells you something.

The boy and daughter #3 came over for dinner on Sunday night after returning from a week in South Carolina and we heard all about their adventures.

Summer has arrived here in flyover country–we topped 90 degrees on Sunday. But spring was long and lovely and the heat and humidity are inevitable. Why complain?

Here are some fun videos (and here) from the Total Lacrosse YouTube channel featuring the boy testing and touting Warrior equipment.

You going to the gun show?

Have a great Monday!

5 Comments

June 1, 2015

A cup of blessing

by chuckofish

It was a rainy, overcast weekend–which is kind of nice sometimes. It gives one permission to slow down and read a book instead of trying to get a million things done. You know what I mean?

However, I did manage to do a few things anyway. I saw this weird bug on my garage.

Have you ever seen anything like him? He was big like a cicada, but didn’t look like our typical flyover cicadas. Zut alors!

I found this while going through a bunch of old books in my basement.

According to the sentiment written inside the cover, my mother gave it to me February 14, 1968. She was always trying to encourage me in my endeavors francaise, but it really was a lost cause.

Apres le petit dejeuner, il avait repete sa chanson pour bien la savoir par couer, et maintenant il se la chantait tres gentilment, sans se tromper. Cela donnait a peu pres ceci:

Tra-la-la, tra-la-lere!

Zim-boum-boum, ran-tan-plan!

Brrm-brrm-brrm, la-di-dere!

Pout-pout-pout, zim-pan-pan!

(Sorry, no accent marks!)

I’m afraid Winnie the Pooh loses something in translation!

I watched To Have and Have Not (1943) in honor of Howard Hawks’ birthday on Saturday. It was as good as a Hemingway novel adapted for the screen by William Faulkner can be. And by that I mean excellent. Which Hawks classic did you watch?

I also watched a really terrible movie: Rhinestone (1984) starring Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton. I had never seen it, and despite Dolly doing her best, it was pretty awful. Stallone was painfully bad.

It is amazing that Bob Clark, who had directed A Christmas Story the year before, ever worked again.

Sunday night I DVR’d Grantchester and watched The Cowboys (1972) which is the story of a cattle owner (John Wayne) who is forced to go on a cattle drive with only a bunch of underage cowboys to help.

The young boys in this movie are excellent. Indeed, the movie is excellent and well directed by Mark Rydell. And although the Duke (spoiler alert) dies at the hands of some lesser men in the movie, it ends well.

The highlight of my weekend was when my old friend Dick, who was in town from Atlanta for our special event at work this week, dropped by my office on Friday and brought me this:

A Mike Matheny autographed baseball! He asked Mike to sign it when he was in Jupiter for spring training. Wasn’t that thoughtful? It certainly made my day!

Have a good Monday!

*Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting–a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”

7 Comments

March 4, 2015

Dear March–Come in

by chuckofish

Dear March — Come in —
How glad I am —
I hoped for you before —

Put down your Hat —
You must have walked —
How out of Breath you are —
Dear March, Come right up the stairs with me —
I have so much to tell —

I got your Letter, and the Birds —
The Maples never knew that you were coming — till I called
I declare — how Red their Faces grew —
But March, forgive me — and
All those Hills you left for me to Hue —
There was no Purple suitable —
You took it all with you —

Who knocks? That April.
Lock the Door —
I will not be pursued —
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied —
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come

That Blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame —

(Emily Dickinson)

The painting is “A Study, In March” by John William Inchbold (1830–1888)

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February 26, 2015

“I exist as I am, that is enough”*

by chuckofish

Well, thank you, fastcoexist.com for letting me know that I live in one of the worst states for “well-being”.

Yes, there we are in gray in flyover country. Well, I say phooey.

Don’t you get tired of being told the results of surveys and studies? I say, live your life and forget about surveys.

I think I will give them up for Lent.

Meanwhile, our well-being in flyover country is greatly enhanced by the fact that these guys are back in training.

C’mon, Mike, turn around!

“I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself.”

(Walt Whitman)

9 Comments

February 10, 2015

Thought for the day

by chuckofish

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

–C.S. Lewis

“Angel of the Lilies” by Louis Comfort Tiffany in the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst

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February 2, 2015

“You will call your walls, Salvation, and all our portals, Praise”*

by chuckofish

Well, another weekend is over. This one was filled with sifting through old, dusty boxes of papers and correspondence. I made a lot of progress! And the OM made guacamole!

Among other things, I found piles of my father’s old book reviews.

He wrote them for the Boston Sunday Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, the Post Dispatch, and various smaller papers through the years. He had a column for awhile called “Bookshelf Browsing,” which was an easy-going, chatty review of new books as they appeared in the mid-1950s. We learn that he preferred Hemingway to Fitzgerald, liked John Buchan and General MacArthur and making sweeping statements like,

It is a rare thing these days to find a novel that is full of wit, humor and whimsy at the same time, and to have all three written by an author who does not belabor them.

He goes on to pronounce The Honor of Gaston Le Torch by Jacques Peret,

A delightful book that might be made into a wonderful film, if Hollywood could, for once, be sane…

Does he sound familiar?

I think our pater would have really liked writing a blog–perhaps one with the catchy title: Bookshelf Browsing. In fact, I’m sure he would have become obsessed with the internet had it been available to him. He certainly would have loved email–all his correspondence with his collector friends all over the world would have been much easier and faster!

However, I’m pretty sure he would have hated everything else about the 21st century.

Have a good Monday!

*from the Sunday Canticle

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January 27, 2015

Bull’s eye

by chuckofish

“When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

–John Updike

Today is the anniversary of John Updike’s death in 2009. So tonight I shall raise a glass to this acclaimed writer and fellow Episcopalian. How about you?

I went to see John Updike speak at my flyover university back in the nineties. I didn’t work there then, but I walked over from the church where I did work which was (and is) a few blocks away. Graham Chapel was packed and I was sitting pretty far in the back. He was unpretentious and generous. A good guy–I could tell.

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