In the velvet

This reflection restored all his self possession. -- Stendhal

What I enjoy about Zoo, despite the fact that James Patterson is an old school hack of the sort to which I do not stoop, is precisely the fact that it is stupid entertainment none of us need take seriously. I want to follow it and have seen only the second episode, alas, mainly to be blamed on apathy, running the gamut of negativity, the rage to strike back juxtaposed against every transfer now a risk of focused poise. I really do hate Debra Horne, Riverside's cut rate shamble ass enforcer, and I would not necessarily stop hating her or Trudy Richardson if I ever get the fuck away from the Presbyterian modal before it is too late. I do not know how far I'd go mentally over the injustices perpetrated on me, as imaginary infliction of violence is one thing, and what I lived on the razor edge of the badlands off North Broad Street is another. Brandon Phillips was a coward, which is, in essence, why I'm still alive. He was also stupid, as, in the time he was taking to subdue me, the exterminator may have gained access to my unit, and Brandon would have gotten caught, in the act. Debra Horne, in her intimidation tactics, perpetuates the cruelty of her race, which I only knew by default, in Home of the Merciful Savior, although, to my memory, there were not many African Americans who worked the wards in Shriners where mio padre had me butchered, latter day. 

Poise is important to Europeans. The French make it a raison d'etre, but it runs the gamut of Western Europe with the exception of my ethnic group, the Romans. I am 45 pages in to Cormac's other notorious book, Blood Meridian, and realized I could care less. McCarthy is a master tactician who runs hula hoops around James Patterson's commercial emphasis, and yet it is Patterson's revenge fantasy which consoles me. All I have to do is touch foreheads with the king of beasts, and the lion king would turn my enemies into viable cadavers for honeycombs, but of course, that is play acting. Actual retribution has a price, and leaves its mark, ever to be done effectively as a form of argument, this is a fine thread in the needle's eye, the main thesis of Cormac's argument. It isn't his skill I reject necessarily, but I still balk, at what, precisely, I think, is the lack of the toll on his protagonists, even when they take their punishment, they move from point A to Z unchanged. This is not how it scores itself on personal experience.

What I am trying to get at in the controversy over Shakespeare's genius does not relate to factual accuracy. Just as I'm not quite a Jamesian, I am certainly no expert on the English Renaissance, though Kermode and Jerry lifted fascinating curtains. If William served as a shield for the provocateur of a man who was an Earl and had the inside skinny on Elizabeth's insecurities, then that shield being so successful cannot be discredited, and must be seen as an essential component of the times, regardless of which camp has the evidence on its side, but there was controversy surrounding attribution of Alexandre Dumas' authorship, namely in the name of race baiting. If we use Dumas' characterizations of royalty as a model, there is no reason a man named Shakespar could not have created R2, R3, H4 and 5. The lack of a personal library after his death is not evidence that he did not have access to Hollinshed. And getting lost in trying to prove this theory over that one is a problem of tunnel vision, a cautionary tale in its own right about levels of investment.