(no subject)

[proximoception]

Suddenly (re-?)occurred to me that The Library of Babel must have reflected Borges' fears about his declining vision - flip "I have always thought of paradise as a kind of library" and you have a special version of hell, where the words become gibberish. Maybe a few sad brief approaches to intelligibility here and there - some fragmentary phrase you can almost parse. When he did go blind it wasn't so bad, he just switched to being read to, and to oral composition. But till that renewal this must have been his personal nightmare, one he merely lends to the questing religious.

Hell as a constantly broken promise of paradise.

Unrelated thought of a few minutes later: Grapes of Wrath had an eye on Moby-Dick, which explains some of Blood Meridian's (a much more explicit imitator) curious resemblance to it. Was that the first time it was taken as blueprint for a Great American Novel attempt? Maybe it was a generational thing - the younger modernists were hit by its revival at about the same time Ulysses registered. More of their novels wandered after the latter, but M-D's a clear presence in Absalom, Absalom! and some Hemingway efforts, The Old Man and the Sea most obviously.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Definitely. America born violent. Have you seen anything read anything about this novel The Son that came out this year?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Hadn't, no. Looks like Maslin liked it. She was one of the few professional reviewers who came out against 1Q84, and she also championed The Last Samurai, so that's probably meaningful.

[thelican.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had that thought about Babel some years back, when I was experiencing such horrible anxiety. Back then, the story seemed like an anxiety dream. And absolutely: "Hell as a constantly broken promise of paradise."

[tdaschel.livejournal.com]

(just a chort note: i'm the guy who'd never read C. McCarthy and - in consultation with you - the planchette landed on Suttree / which is *fine*, 'cause it's a Realism i can understand, a TragiComic that doesn't lean too heavily on the former term. and, sure, the Faulkner tawk by readers *and* critics makes sense enough, but - for me - this is the sorta stuff i wish D.H. Lawrence had made, which is to say i wish he'd drawn up a different contract with himself, becoming - perhaps - unrecognizable in the process ..)

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Interesting - I'd never have thought of juxtaposing Lawrence and McCarthy. Maybe because of the catholic/protestant personality divide? Which seems robust even into unbelieving adulthoods, or semibelieving or whatever fits those two.

[tdaschel.livejournal.com]

ah, had not considered the factor of Religious Personality / tho' this has come up w.r.t. Protestant Frye and Catholic McLuhan, hey!