Joys and Diminished Hopes

I began this blog some time ago in order, I think, to make a record of writings and artworks that struck a mood, or invoked one, or suggested some new possibility. I had Dylan's song, New Morning, on my mind when I decided to begin the blog. On this Neeee-uu--eew Morning, with you. Here I begin again, perhaps, to record clips that leave their aesthetical marks on me.

Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. Why?, but I'm fascinated with The Convict, Magwich. I read Great Expectations when I was around 13--I'm reading it again at 31. What I recall most about the novel is Magwich. Pip's interactions with Magwich, particularly Pip's retrieving "wittles" for Magwich. Wittles, for me, are crumbs of bread and blocks of cheese. I retain a haunting image of Magwich's hanging.

When I was 17 I began reading pretty voraciously: novels, books driven by ideas, works that I thought my father had read, or ought to have. It's difficult to trace the origin of a habit. Why did I begin reading these books? This knowledge is lost on me. I recall lying on the couch reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra when my father asked, "whatch'ya readin." I said, "Nietzsche." He said, "Ohhh nooo," stared at me for a few seconds, grinned as if he couldn't stop the inevitable train-wreck, but also as if he'd thought the track better than many others I might take. I think this experience fed my desire to read. Also around this time my father found me reading The Brothers Karamazov. He offered some detail or impression about Smerdyakov or Ivan...he was familiar with the book.

The novels that first drew me in were by Dostoevsky, Henry Miller (Black Spring, Tropics), Camus, the works of Nietzsche, Proust, Kerouac, Tolstoy, also Sartre's plays.

Big books attracted me too: War and Peace, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Remembrance of Things Past, Don Quixote.