In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora;
Ovid
In WAYR?, I note what I’m reading and comment...you note what you are reading and comment. Occasionally, I may add a section or a link related to books.
Inevitably in times of political tumult, I go back and re-read Latin authors, usually (but not always) Cicero, who reminds me that the times, the players, and even the stakes may be superficially different but the political game is pretty much the same. After last Tuesday’s presidential election, turned to my favorite Latin author.
Permanent reading list:
The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne-read none of this this week.
I am reading:
Metamorphoses by Ovid translated by Horace Gregory- I own two copies of this; one in prose and one in poetry. I barely know the Latin, but I do know that opinions vary as to the qualities of the translations. I’ve always preferred the poetic version. I think I first read Metamorphoses (or a portion of it) in high school and immediately wondered if The Flood in Book 1 was the same flood as in The book of Genesis. I mean, if all of these different cultures had the same story about a flood, maybe there really was a flood.
Or maybe not.
Tristia by Ovid- Haven’t read Ovid’s poetic account of his banishment from Rome by the Emperor Augustus in over a decade. I’d forgotten how defiant and witty Ovid was even in the face of his humiliating exile from the city he loved.
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace-Got through a few pages.
Diaries Volume 1: 1939-1960 by Christopher Isherwood- Hope to get through the last 100 pages.
Futureland by Walter Mosley
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This morning, I’m getting political...maybe it’s the lack of sleep.
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For the past couple of days, I have been thinking of one of the grisliest and most macabre passages that I have ever read.
It’s in the latter part of William Vollman’s fictional study of totalitarianism, Europe Central when a group a Nazis are sitting down shooting the breeze, as army officers have done...well, since there were armies, I suppose. Vollman notes that there are flakes flying around the dinner table and then mentions in a footnote that the flakes are the remnants of Jews that were burned in the ovens.
What’s etched in my mind about that scene (in a relatively dull book, I agree with cfk on that note) is that I was confronted with the fact that even as the immense monstrosity of Nazi genocide appears in the form of flakes which the diners gave no thought to, here they were sitting doing something so...human.
I think that as we continue to discuss the shocking results and ramifications of the 2016 presidential elections, can we remember that we are all human beings and that we pretty much go through the same shit in our own ways?
You have the Bernie Sanders supporters returning to the fold here at DK acting quite smug and self-sanctified about the result. Hillary Clinton has been deified, for all intents and purposes, by some of her supporters; others have lashed out at the inability of the Clinton campaign to defeat a Ku Klux Klan-endorsed carnival barker/reality TV star that never expected to make it through the first round of Republican primaries (I’ve done a couple of those rants myself).
People in the affected and targeted groups are angry and hurt at what the exit polls show and are terrified at the consequences based on what has came out of the now president-elect’s own mouth over the course of the campaign. It’s quite possible that millions of lives will be drastically revised, and not for the better.
Smug and self-satisfied people saying “I told you so” have become so presumptuous as to say that people in targeted groups need to shut up calling others racist, sexist, and xenophobic even as they are being attacked in the streets with impunity; attacks that have barely been remarked upon by the new leader of the free world and will surely increase in both number and intensity.
What’s ironic to me is that the hubris displayed up and down the recommend lists and in the comment sections of diaries looks pretty much like the same type of hubris...on all sides.
Please...let’s remember that all of us, of whatever race, religion, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, class status...we are all human beings.
So is Hillary Clinton.
So is Bernie Sanders.
So are the white-working class voters of The Rust Belt
And yes, even the Orange Xerxes-wannabe that we call the president-elect...he’s human, too, even if he doesn’t seem like it at (lots of) times.
Thank you for reading.
(I won’t discuss politics in this space again for the foreseeable future.)