One The Anti-conspiracy Two Homecoming s Not a Dance

Transcription

1 N O T E S One The Anti-conspiracy 1. Educational bureaucrats are also known herein as educationists and edificationists those bureaucrats who would teach others how to teach and then try to invent measures for edification that quantify learning, which is unquantifiable. 2. For my people, the Nez Perce, storytelling doesn t record or transmit culture and meaningful teaching alone, it also creates the world. 3. Circe, the witch in The Odyssey whose draughts cause men to lose all thoughts of home, is one of a set of interior tales used by the singer to illustrate cultural values and not dramatic human behavior. Two Homecoming s Not a Dance 1. All references are to Robert Fitzgerald, trans., The Odyssey by Homer (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1998). 2. An apocryphal story about the poet Adrienne Rich was that when asked how all the photographers who excitedly met her in an airport knew she was coming, she replied, My dear, I hired them. 3. Synecdoche is, I would maintain, not contradictory to this statement. Synecdoche is essentially mimetic language phrased in taglines that need no interpretation. Thus, a thousand sails hardly needs us to stop and wonder or admire, the way Frost s apples do in After Apple-picking. 4. See James Boswell and Frederick A. Pottle, eds., Boswell s London Journal, (London: Folio Society, 1985). 5. See Anthony Burgess, Clockwork Orange (New York: W.W. Norton, 1963).

2 192 Notes Three Truth and Beauty: When Divine Horizons Shrink and the Gods Pack Up to Leave 1. See W. B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, definitive edition with the author s final revisions (New York and London: Macmillan, 1956), p Miss (and she insisted on the Miss ) Marion McNamara taught Latin at Henry Gunn High School in Palo Alto, CA circa She possibly was the strictest teacher I ever was lucky enough to have. Caesar s words translate out as, All Gaul is divided into three parts. 3. Fere libentur homines id quod volunt credunt translates as, Men almost always believe that which they wish. Four Sex, More Sex, and a Little Corruption 1. Life insurance does not insure your living; it insures someone else s living after you re done with dying. Not unlike the Death Tax being, in truth, the Greed Tax. A stiffy is what Caterina calls a nightingale in the fourth story on the Fifth Day of The Decameron, though it only has tumescently sung eight times in one night. 2. This is the opening to The Inferno. See Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Italian Text with English Trans. And comment by John D. Sinclair (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). All references for Boccaccio are taken from Giovanni Boccaccio and Charles Singleton, The Decameron, The John Payne Translation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). There are other and many good translations of The Decameron. Why I feel preference for Singleton s revision of Payne s may have to do with the sentence structure that is at times as convoluted as late Henry James, but which slows me down and makes me pay close attention to modifying clauses, authorial intrusions, and so on. If not those intelligent reasons, then it s a bleeding mystery. 3. See the brilliant review article by James Woods, The Blue River of Truth, New Republic, August 1, Though I have always believed that Realism is the overarching umbrella of fiction under which even nonrealisms shade themselves, Woods adds clarity and insight to the argument. 4. I am not against these donations. I am critical of the too-easy easing of our consciences. Five The Nibelungenrap 1. All references are to Helen Mustard, trans., The Nibelungenlied, in Medieval Epics (Random House: Modern Library, New York, 1963). 2. See W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming, in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats.

3 Notes 193 Six Separation of Life from Life 1. See X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, An Introduction to Fiction (New York: Longman, 2005). All page references are to this edition. 2. Percy B. Shelley and George Woodberry, Complete Poetical Works (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1901). Seven Dublin s Polonius 1. Gabriel Conroy is a main character in The Dead. See James Joyce, Dubliners (New York: Modern Library, 2012). All references are to this edition. 2. e. e. cummings, Collected Poems (Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1977). Eight Censoring the Censor 1. I do not mean Roosevelt Republicans but Rove-Norquist Republicans. And I do not apologize for profiling any group with tea party in its name. 2. James Pickering (ed.), Fiction 100 (New York: Prentice Hall, 2001), pp All page references are to this translation. 3. A poshlust is a philistine who lusts after posh-ness. See Valdimir Nabokov s essay, Philistines and Philistinism, The New York Review, September 24, Nine Death by Hot Air 1. Tomasso Landolfi, Gogol s Wife and Other Stories (New York: New Directions, 1989). All references are to this edition. 2. Note that I am not criticizing Frey who showed fools their foolishness. A literary Confidence Man who allowed Oprah s prurient caring (which may be very real) to trick her and 3.5 million readers. The real response to Frey is not whether it s good or bad, true or false, but Who cares? Ten Unsanforized Time 1. My apologies to George Smoot and all the physicists whose teeth I have just set on edge. 2. Heli-vets is a comedy sketch on That Mitchell and Webb Look, on BBC television. 3. See W. S. Penn, The Tale as Genre in Short Fiction, in New Short Story Theories, ed. Charles May (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994).

4 194 Notes 4. See W. S. Penn, The Telling of the World (New York: Stuart, Tabori, and Chang, 1996). 5. Graham Greene, Collected Stories (New York: Penguin Classics, 2005). All references are to this edition. 6. See Jos é Antonio Burciaga, Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (Santa Barbara: Joshua Odell Editions, 1993), p As for praise of a book, there needs to be a course on deciphering book-jacket praise for blurbs. If they are about the book, they are often written by people who don t actually read the book. If they are about books other than the one in hand her former books it probably means the one in hand is as dull as ditchwater. It just happened to me: I bought a new novel by a writer I praise in passing in this book with praise all over the back cover about the writer s earlier work only to discover why the praise was all for her other books. Am I going to tell you which writer or what book? No. I am upset enough by what I say about Grace Paley at this book s end. 8. Five years : I now believe that no book by writers who are still alive should be taught in English classes. Eleven Hamsters with Liquid Eyes 1. Ted Hughes, The Rain Horse, in The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories, ed. Malcolm Bradbury (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1987), p With all their so-called information technology at hand, few knew when World War II occurred and what it was about, other than the Jewish kids. 3. See Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). 4. Carson McCullers, The Collected Stories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), p All references are to this edition. Twelve Simplifying Our Days 1. George P. Elliott, Among the Dangs (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961). All references are to this edition. Thirteen Weary Work 1. Greene, p Heinrich B ö ll, The Stories of Heinrich B ö ll, trans. Leila Vennewitz (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1986). All references are to this edition.

5 Notes 195 Fourteen The Life of Swans 1. Grace Paley, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1960). All references are to this edition. Fifteen Inversions 1. A reference to Mugatu in Zoolander, directed by Ben Stiller, Paramount Pictures, Mugatu is the evil fashion designer who claims he is important because he invented the piano key necktie. Sixteen In a Hole in the House of the Famous Poet 1. Muriel Spark, The Complete Short Stories (London: Penguin Books, 2001). All references are to this edition.