"Sports may be the place in contemporary life
where Americans find sacred community most easily."
— All Things Shining , the conclusion
Or Bolivia —
Backstories — Natural Hustlers.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Sermon
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Saturday, January 22, 2011
Ask Not
Background— see Natural Hustler in this journal.
This is from All Things Shining— "Conclusion: Lives Worth Living in a Secular Age"
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Monday, January 23, 2006
Monday January 23, 2006
The Case
An entry suggested by today's New York Times story by Tom Zeller Jr., A Million Little Skeptics:
From The Hustler, by Walter Tevis:
The only light in the room was from the lamp over the couch where she was reading.
He looked at her face. She was very drunk. Her eyes were swollen, pink at the corners. "What's the book?" he said, trying to make his voice conversational. But it sounded loud in the room, and hard.
She blinked up at him, smiled sleepily, and said nothing.
"What's the book?" His voice had an edge now.
"Oh," she said. "It's Kierkegaard. Soren Kierkegaard." She pushed her legs out straight on the couch, stretching her feet. Her skirt fell back a few inches from her knees. He looked away.
"What's that?" he said.
"Well, I don't exactly know, myself." Her voice was soft and thick.
He turned his face away from her again, not knowing what he was angry with. "What does that mean, you don't know, yourself?"
She blinked at him. "It means, Eddie, that I don't exactly know what the book is about. Somebody told me to read it, once, and that's what I'm doing. Reading it."
He looked at her, tried to grin at her– the old, meaningless, automatic grin, the grin that made everybody like him– but he could not. "That's great," he said, and it came out with more irritation than he had intended.
She closed the book, tucked it beside her on the couch. "I guess this isn't your night, Eddie. Why don't we have a drink?"
"No." He did not like that, did not want her being nice to him, forgiving. Nor did he want a drink.
Her smile, her drunk, amused smile, did not change. "Then let's talk about something else," she said. "What about that case you have? What's in it?" Her voice was not prying, only friendly. "Pencils?"
"That's it," he said. "Pencils."
She raised her eyebrows slightly. Her voice seemed thick. "What's in it, Eddie?"
"Figure it out yourself." He tossed the case on the couch.
Related material:
Soren Kierkegaard on necessity and possibility
in The Sickness Unto Death, Chapter 3,
the Baseball Almanac,
and this morning's entry, "Natural Hustler."
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Friday, October 8, 2010
Starting Out in the Evening
… and Finishing Up at Noon
This post was suggested by last evening’s post on mathematics and narrative
and by Michiko Kakutani on Vargas Llosa in this morning’s New York Times.
Above: Frank Langella in Right: Johnny Depp in |
 |
“One must proceed cautiously, for this road— of truth and falsehood in the realm of fiction— is riddled with traps and any enticing oasis is usually a mirage.”
— “Is Fiction the Art of Lying?”* by Mario Vargas Llosa, New York Times essay of October 7, 1984
My own adventures in that realm— as reader, not author— may illustrate Llosa’s remark.
A nearby stack of paperbacks I haven’t touched for some months (in order from bottom to top)—
- Pale Rider by Alan Dean Foster
- Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
- The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
- Literary Reflections by James A. Michener
- The Ninth Configuration by William Peter Blatty
- A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
- Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
- The Tempest by William Shakespeare
- Being There by Jerzy Kosinski
- What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
- A Gathering of Spies by John Altman
- Selected Poems by Robinson Jeffers
- Hook— Tinkerbell’s Challenge by Tristar Pictures
- Rising Sun by Michael Crichton
- Changewar by Fritz Leiber
- The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe
- The Hustler by Walter Tevis
- The Natural by Bernard Malamud
- Truly Tasteless Jokes by Blanche Knott
- The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
- Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
What moral Vargas Llosa might draw from the above stack I do not know.
Generally, I prefer the sorts of books in a different nearby stack. See Sisteen, from May 25. That post the fanciful reader may view as related to number 16 in the above list. The reader may also relate numbers 24 and 22 above (an odd couple) to By Chance, from Thursday, July 22.
* The Web version’s title has a misprint— “living” instead of “lying.”
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Monday, January 22, 2007
Monday January 22, 2007
A Brief Alternate Version of
The Diamond Age:
Or, a Young Lady’s
Illustrated Primer
Piper Laurie is 75.
For Piper Laurie
on her birthday
(again):
“He was part of my dream, of course–
but then I was part of his dream, too!”
— Lewis Carroll,
Through the Looking Glass
Chapter XII (“Which Dreamed It?”)
He looked at her face. She was very drunk. Her eyes were swollen, pink at the corners. “What’s the book?” he said, trying to make his voice conversational. But it sounded loud in the room, and hard.
She blinked up at him, smiled sleepily, and said nothing.
“What’s the book?” His voice had an edge now.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s Kierkegaard. Soren Kierkegaard.” She pushed her legs out straight on the couch, stretching her feet. Her skirt fell back a few inches from her knees. He looked away.
“What’s that?” he said.
“Well, I don’t exactly know, myself.” Her voice was soft and thick.
He turned his face away from her again, not knowing what he was angry with. “What does that mean, you don’t know, yourself?”
She blinked at him. “It means, Eddie, that I don’t exactly know what the book is about. Somebody told me to read it, once, and that’s what I’m doing. Reading it.”
She blinked up at him, smiled sleepily, and said nothing.
“What’s the book?” His voice had an edge now.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s Kierkegaard. Soren Kierkegaard.” She pushed her legs out straight on the couch, stretching her feet. Her skirt fell back a few inches from her knees. He looked away.
“What’s that?” he said.
“Well, I don’t exactly know, myself.” Her voice was soft and thick.
He turned his face away from her again, not knowing what he was angry with. “What does that mean, you don’t know, yourself?”
She blinked at him. “It means, Eddie, that I don’t exactly know what the book is about. Somebody told me to read it, once, and that’s what I’m doing. Reading it.”
— Walter Tevis, The Hustler
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