Few of Joyce's books appear on the Irish school curriculum. His play "Exiles" has not been performed in Dublin for many years. His poetry is almost unknown in his homeland, and "Ulysses" is widely regarded in Ireland as an impenetrable and pretentious folly (which, in parts, it magnificently is). Joseph O'Conner for WSJ
The Hill County Farms case illustrates the loathsome underbelly of the American welfare state, that small pockets of our country are no better than dangerously disintegrated communities in Somalia. I do not care what your politics are. I do not care if I have raised more than a few eyebrows with the depth of my internalized scars. I do not care if Angelina Jolie forms a Tinseltown Exploratory Committee and wins all 50 states in a landslide in 2016, this horrifying instance of slavery is why I hate you, why, if you are of African ancestry and I have hurt your feelings, you have nothing to say to me, and why if you are a homosexual, I'd wire your mouth shut sooner than pay you a farthing in respect, and why, if you are white and suburban with your two children, what these men had to suffer is the fault of your despicable self-interest, and why, if you are a disability center consumer, you're deluding yourself. Next to the conditions these men endured my poverty is rich, but I have seen situations that do not leave much in the lack of imagination in terms of a crumbling existence that the least of ant colonies would not endure.
You see this story as an aberration. To me it's civilization's end, just beginning.
There are very few active Joyce forums online. I joined a Joyce serv akin to the James list model that hasn't seen a post since 2007, driven in my bid to find out to the degree possible how much of James Joyce had read before 1922. Bloomsday makes me wrinkle my nose and avert my gaze, as if I had caught sight of my brother's dead hamster in the basement, drowned and floating. I do not really wish to read a fucking passage of Ulysses on June 16th. Charming Lance asked me if I would be well enough, if I wished to; no doubt I shall. The exercise and celebration is pointless.
Showing posts with label hill county farms case. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hill county farms case. Show all posts
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Friday, April 5, 2013
Cessation's Farce
A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.--G.K. Chesterton
I did not read Christopher Hitchens' last review of Chesterton in the Atlantic, but I did read Bennet's editorial note on kindle about the processes involved in editing a polemicist who was literally breathing his last on a hospital mattress, and I had to wonder if in the modern sense of the word, terminal conditions have become a consequential folly, a paradox that the Menippean G.K. himself might have appreciated. Ebert also engaged in a form of self delusion. His optimism could not bargain with death any more than anguish does not hasten it, unless the anguished utilize accouterments; the will to die must have to be very great indeed, and the bargaining with the limits of our biology is nothing new. On his deathbed Henry James bestirred himself to consider Napoleon's delusions of grandeur (again, oddly not uncommon among homosexuals) and it is asserted that Proust revised his lost time to his last breath; J Edgar Hoover, I believe, died in office at a near miraculous time of history. Hollywood would have us believe that Charlton Heston revived Rex Harrison from his deathbed.
Is it necessarily a good thing that Westerners refuse to yield to the inevitable? Cripples face the constant threat of annihilation, and the more astute are circumspect about ontology, but not Caucasians with contemporary bourgeoisie sensibilities. I do not mean to suggest that people past 50 should not fight disease and attempt to remain relevant, only that eradicating death as a ritualized transition, giving way to a sterile clinical environment where our cadavers are rolled to the morgue, seems too much of a trade off to banality. This is more than the residue of religious nostalgia. Death needs to be respected as part of the natural process of a living ecosystem.
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.--G.K. Chesterton
I did not read Christopher Hitchens' last review of Chesterton in the Atlantic, but I did read Bennet's editorial note on kindle about the processes involved in editing a polemicist who was literally breathing his last on a hospital mattress, and I had to wonder if in the modern sense of the word, terminal conditions have become a consequential folly, a paradox that the Menippean G.K. himself might have appreciated. Ebert also engaged in a form of self delusion. His optimism could not bargain with death any more than anguish does not hasten it, unless the anguished utilize accouterments; the will to die must have to be very great indeed, and the bargaining with the limits of our biology is nothing new. On his deathbed Henry James bestirred himself to consider Napoleon's delusions of grandeur (again, oddly not uncommon among homosexuals) and it is asserted that Proust revised his lost time to his last breath; J Edgar Hoover, I believe, died in office at a near miraculous time of history. Hollywood would have us believe that Charlton Heston revived Rex Harrison from his deathbed.
Is it necessarily a good thing that Westerners refuse to yield to the inevitable? Cripples face the constant threat of annihilation, and the more astute are circumspect about ontology, but not Caucasians with contemporary bourgeoisie sensibilities. I do not mean to suggest that people past 50 should not fight disease and attempt to remain relevant, only that eradicating death as a ritualized transition, giving way to a sterile clinical environment where our cadavers are rolled to the morgue, seems too much of a trade off to banality. This is more than the residue of religious nostalgia. Death needs to be respected as part of the natural process of a living ecosystem.
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