#anyway book good i feel cuckoo bananas

[nedlittle]

as someone who only just finished gideon the ninth last sunday & finally understands the hype & hasn't finished the other books, PLEASE release the 11 pages of notes

your wish is my command, here are my notes verbatim typed from my tiny notebook (typos notwithstanding. i fixed those so i don't look stupid)

ACT I

P. 29 - before the duel, Harrow presents herself “emptied like a quiver” prefiguring the necromancer/cavalier dynamic and the fact that they will grow to need each other. The king & lionheart of it all…

P. 54 - Gideon tells Harrow: “Your heart is a party for ten thousand nails.” and I SCREAMED 

P. 73: [paragraph describing Ianthe and Coronabeth in luxurious detail] “The boy just looked like a bit of a dick.” lesbianism

P. 76 - “He didn’t look healthy; he looked like a collection of lemons in a sack.” Why is this so evocative

SO funny that Harrow is like Griddle. You hog you need to do this correctly. Wear the damn face paint. And then it’s just a weird Ninth House thing. I love space Catholicism these bitches so deranged

Cannot read the “I pray the tomb stays locked forever. I pray the rock is never rolled away” prayer without it being to the tune of ‘No Children’

ACT II

P. 110 - “Coronabeth Tridentarius, Princess of Ida, took her hand and roguishly kissed the backs of Gideon’s knuckles.” I know there’s a whole essay on chivalry and gender on Tor but I guess I just want to say that there’s a really interesting subversion of the medieval lady/champion dynamic going on. Coronabeth kisses Gideon’s knuckles. Dulcinea has Gideon physically show off but Gideon, bound by her promise to Harrow, cannot talk and thus any typical structures for wooing are inverted. By her silence she is rendered as cool and unbreachable as a maiden in a tower

Something something Gideon’s physical body and her personhood always being someone else’s property.

All of Jeannemary’s dialogue with Magnus being parenthesized and in a smaller type is such a fun little touch

P. 125-6 - “[...] but she had fed her entire life into the meat grinder of hope.” Fuck me!

P. 128 - “She had never seen Harrowhark Nonagesimus’s naked face.” Harrow having to perform being Reverend Daughter not only her role but the entire house in the shape of a girl

[Angela Carter voice] a girl who is both death and the maiden

 P. 151 - “You could have died today.” "you could finish me right now, if you liked. You might even win."......hot.

Every single one of Gideon’s silly nicknames for Harrow is perfect.

P. 152 - “She smiled again–slower than before, just as terrible, just as strange.” Okay Galadriel

P. 161 has the first time Gideon calls Harrow by her first name. By the end of the act it will be three times. Harrow has yet to say hers.

“P. 163 - “You can control my body. You can read my thoughts.” I believe this is what the kids call foreshadowing for book 2

Also on that page: “But first, Griddle, I’m afraid I have to pass out.” I love her.

Verbatim annotation from p. 167: ‘SHE’S NEVER HAD A DESERT :(‘ 

I know that they’re not friends but [John Darnielle voice]: people say friends don’t destroy each other what do they know about friends

Ianthe’s “I don’t live alternative histories” god I am so excited for her to be awful

The dynamic kind of reminds me of Sweet Smell of Success (1957) which features a similarly nasty yet reliant dynamic but it ends Far Worse. Very much we need each other to be a cohesive whole but that doesn’t mean we have to be nice

IT WAS THEIR ANNIVERSARY!!! NO

ACT III

I will be surprised if Dulcinea survives and also does not end up being marginally evil.

Not to sound like it’s 2014 and I just discovered all-female casts but I’m really into both the 2nd and 9th being the only ones with both necro + cav being women. I know it’s a basic thing and that there isn’t

a ton about the Second House yet but having the representatives of “The Emperor’s Strength” both be girls…nice

Naberius die challenge!

P. 200 - “He wouldn’t have let anything happen to Abigail [...] She hated heights. She never would have risked falling.” I am howling like a shot wolf.

First of all, Gideon being affected by Magnus’s death because he was nice to her without any ulterior motives: OUCH. Second, “we are all the sons and daughters that the House of the Ninth possess.” The Twelfth Night of it all…the performance of it all. (“I am all the daughters of my father’s house and all the brothers too.” 2.4)

The Harrow who lives in my head has a mullet

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL I EVER DESIRE YOUR JUICE

The First time Harrow calls Gideon by her name is p. 228

The choice of ‘spawned’ to refer to Harrow’s birth feels deliberate and I’m sure I’ll find out why later. Also the Scandalous Nudity being her face rather than her body when they’re both bare…it’s about living around and under the foot of someone your whole life but never being allowed to know them

P. 234 - Gideon can’t even say Harrow’s name aloud to anyone else…I wish to die! Swiftly!

P. 246 - Gideon has a hot bath for the first time (yay!) and wonders “whether water could get inside of you and make you sick.” God the Ninth House really is living in Vampire Times. Aristotle, you there?

The way all the different houses approach necromancy and the necro/cav dynamic is SO interesting! Cam’s line on p. 235 about the Eight “breed[ing] batteries” absolutely chilled me. Also the juxtaposition between the Eighth using cavaliers as an energy source vs Ianthe, absolute freak, taking a chunk out of Babs. The physical body vs the energy which propels it. Then contrasting that with pairs like Magnus & Abigail (rip) and Cam & Pal who mentally and emotionally rely on each other instead. It isn’t parasitic. KING AND LIONHEART! GO CRAZY AAH! GO STUPID AAH!

I am using all of my meager brain cells to formulate a thought about Camilla and Marta’s fight that isn’t just. wrow. women. OK. The description is short and brutal like the fight itself. The line about Cam fighting like a grease fire works so well my blood was in my EARS! When she dislocated Marta’s arm my own arm jerked back in shock. Fully almost yeeted the book

Yay for Pal also getting a hot moment. One man <3

“Harrow “rose to the occasion like an evening star”....DEATH FIRST TO VULTURES AND SCAVENGERS…I love her something awful. 

My highlighter ran out on p. 275 because I highlighted basically the whole page. The girls HUG!! Gideon lifts Harrow off the ground! Unsure if I should tag myself as ‘midnight hagette’ or Harrow’s utter lesbian brain death. At “It feels like forever” I genuinely screamed into my hands. God they’re it. THEY’RE IT.

P. 284 - “Gideon wanted her longsword and she wanted Harrow.” yeah me too

P. 285 - Jeannemary: “I hated [Isaac] when we were little, he wasn’t at all what I wanted.” ough the parallels

I know that naming a character ‘Isaac’ in your space opera about traumatized Catholics is sort of like naming a character ‘sacrifice’ and yet it’s still so gut wrenching! I love and I hate when characters fall victim to the prophecies within their names

Speaking of Biblical etymology, I see you Judith Deuteros. Please decapitate a dude

I knew about the Sex Pal joke and still guffawed

CHAPTERS 26-34

The description of Isaac’s body as a “broken sieve” really upset me and also harkens back to Harrow being empty as a quiver. The necromancer’s body as something which exists to be filled by energy and power, but also something so vulnerable as to demand the physical protection and occasional energy of its cavalier

P. 292 - “When [Dulcinea] breathed it sounded like custard sloshing around an air conditioner.” Absolutely Fucking Wretched!!!

P. 294 - “Mostly cancer and just a little bit of women.” each House really is fucked up in new and exciting ways

Gideon’s nightmare of finding Jeannemary’s severed limbs in her bed really kneecaps you. It’s giving Bluebeard. It’s giving Robber Bridegroom. It’s giving cavaliers as expendable physical forms, and that kind of body horror hasn’t quite been present aside from the avulsion room which wasn’t so bad

P. 331 - “What would you do if you discovered Camilla was a murderer?” "Help her bury the body." G O D

This entire page kills me. For some reason the one year difference and the choice to say “I’ve known her as long as she’s lived” like Harrow’s life is contingent on Gideon’s. One flesh one end B I T C H ! !

Also on that page: “She nearly killed me half a dozen times growing up, but I always knew why.” ok cool!

WAS NOT READY FOR THIS REVELATION???

I have run out of insightful commentary but Harrow wanting “prey, rival, and audience all wrapped up in one.” vs Gideon being “hungry for the Reverend Daughter’s preoccupation”. Don’t you think they’re the same thing? Love and attention? They’re both watching and being watched. Portrait of a Lady on Fire shit

I think Harrow and Cam should hold hands if only because they’d both hate it

Tamsyn loves a prophetic name. I thought she’d subverted it with Protisilaus but nope. Dead all along. First to die

Ianthe’s head pun…what is wrong with her

P. 352 - genuinely don’t have anything of substance to say about the pool scene but “I am exactly two hundred sons and daughters of my House, Griddle–I am the whole generation of the Ninth.” All this PLUS Harrow piloting her parents to keep the Ninth functioning. Christ.

P. 355 - “I am tired of being two hundred corpses.” ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch

Incredibly normal that Harrow’s parents were like hello our ten-year-old war crime daughter time for our group suicide! Here, I’ll tie your noose :) normal family!

I haven’t quite the familiarity with Antigone to say there’s an Antigone parallel somewhere but hmm

Cannot talk about the rest of this scene. I can barely look at it. YOU ARE MY ONLY FRIEND! I AM UNDONE WITHOUT YOU!! 

Oh to have your only friend Gideon Nav kiss you on the forehead

I love you 4’11” teenage saint war crime necrophiliac 

Gideon choosing to sleep in the cavalier bed. It’s about devotion as both a contract and an active choice. ‘I Will Follow You Into the Dark’ shit. I’m sick

P. 371 - “Dead as space, though accurately, that’s been true for a very, very long time.” I know this refers to Teacher but also stars themselves transmit light for millennia after they burn out. The cosmos itself as a haunted house

Why does the Emperor have a cohort anyway? What enemies are there that an army is necessary to grind children through? I need to know more about this

Cannot articulate this but Ianthe having to be a true necromancer and eating Babs to become a lyctor IS feminist not just because it’s such an overcome male power trip moment but also because it seems that In Media we can only have female villains if they’re tormented and redeemed by the end, they aren’t allowed to be deranged little freaks like this. She’s the damn joker!

REST IN PISS BABS. Again, genuinely progressive that Ianthe eats him and absorbs his perfect cavalier training; then, when she cannot keep it up she turns into a SKIN SHIELD?? [John Darnielle voice] come unhinged! Get revenge!

You’re really eased into the body horror and then Act IV is like hey kid you’re going to experience body horrors beyond your comprehension.

CHAPTERS 35-END 

Thinking about 8-year-old Palamedes writing to 15-year-old Dulcinea about how he’s determined to cure her. Also interesting to think that something so mundane as cancer still exists in this world where people are regularly getting bodied by skeletons

Oh, re: Pal, I forgot to highlight this but there’s a line a few (?) chapters back where he surveys his work and sees that it’s good which is directly from god creating the universe

P. 400 - “[Gideon’s] brain was full of sweet fuck all.” yeah girl me too

Every single man in this book has died. Feminism but also Palamedes my friend :(

“Tell Camilla–oh never mind, she knows what to do.” Doctor Who vibes (sorry) “If you see Rose, tell her…tell her…oh, she knows.”

P. 406 - “Camilla Hect off the leash was like light moving across water. She punched her knives into the Lyctor’s guard over and over and over. Cytherea met them ably, but such was Camilla’s speed and perfect hate that she could only hope to block the thunderstorm of blows; she could not even begin to push back against them.” The wording here feels so deliberately Homeric! It’s her aristeia!

It doesn’t mention this in the after matter, but I am choosing to believe Cam was named after Camilla in the Aeneid. She HAS to be!!

I understand why people scream at Marvel movies now but the more apt comparison for Gideon & her two-hander is the re-forging of Anduril. I can hear the score

P. 412 - “I need to be inside you.” NOW IS NOT THE TIME HARROW!!

P. 414 - “Did you behold me, Griddle?” she got yeeted by a vertebrae string because she was too busy beholding you, Harrow!

Rosary-whip made of knuckles. What a great time to be ex-Catholic. This is so hot of her

Camilla Hect aroace icon. Send tweet.

A climactic boss fight where all 5 characters are women…wrow

FUCK YEAH DISMEMBERMENT!!

P. 429 - “All you have to do is live.” Harrow begging Gideon to do the one thing she thought was impossible as a child

Oh these bitches in LOVE

I love “undeserved” forgiveness

[holds Harrowhark Nonagesimus] you do not have to be good you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

I’m sorry I have zero thoughts I’m just saying ROMANCE ROMANCE ROMANCE ROMANCE ROMANCE ROMANCE over and over and over again in my head

“First flower of my House” is the most romantic shit I’ve ever heard get it OUT of my face. That is not something you come up with on the spot…

The cruelest thing anyone has ever done to Harrow in her life is willingly die for her…

P. 436 - “They were cheek to cheek: Gideon’s arm and Harrow’s arm entwined, holding the sword aloft, letting the steel catch the light.” No THIS is the most romantic shit

Harrow/Pal lavender marriage of the century lmao

Gideon & Harrow 🤝 Gimli & Legolas

Quoting the verses of the Book of Ruth that’s commonly used at weddings

Hey at least I successfully guessed that Dulcinea would be evil & dead by the end. I love being right

IN SUMMARY: DEATH DYING SUFFERING ROMANCE PAIN

#going back through these notes and the amount of stuff i accidentally foreshadowed.... #what you don't see is rebecca-dewinters and i opening each other's notes only to realize that we wrote/quoted the same thing #anyway book good i feel cuckoo bananas #the locked tomb #alittletoosaintjust #answered

[sunflowersseemhappy]

would you be down to do the m6 with an apprentice with adhd 🥺 i would lov u 5ever (i will lov u 5ever anyway u r very talented)

I honestly have no idea how good or bad this is (but I live in hope), I don’t think I’m great at mental health headcanons so any criticism is welcome.

REQUESTS ARE CLOSED, but for now here is my Masterlist!

Thank you for the request @opprose, love u 5ever for the kind words! 

Asra

Asra’s always been pretty patient, and that’s no problem when it comes to your ADHD, he has godly amounts of patience to spare even then.

But he’s learned about how to keep you engaged, he knows your tendencies better than you do and usually adapts the situation if needed.

Asra just kind of accepts the way things are, he knows you don’t mean to be rude if you look away and do something while he’s talking or if you forget to do the tasks he set’s you whilst he’s out of town.

It’s just normal.

Of course the burnt to a crisp cookies in the oven would beg to differ but...

Asra soon made a habit of leaving Faust with you when he could, so you didn’t forget about the cookies the next time. It seems snakes have pretty good time management.

The only thing Asra has ever had to worry about is impulsiveness, which when practicing magic, can be a dangerous game.

Asra has always strived to teach you the importance of only using magic when actually necessary but should you ever pick up a book of spells you’re sure to find a very colourful note put there by Asra to suggest against it.

Other than that Asra has just never really preferred it any other way; cluttered messes from projects you’ve forgotten about, tens of little lists pinned to the walls, or watching your face as your brain switches between one topic or another. Lighting up as you talk about things that interest you.

Nadia

At first the fact that you couldn’t seem to sit still made Nadia worry, only because she believed she was making you uncomfortable in some way.

But no, it turns out you’re trying really hard to listen but your ADHD is just making it a bit hard to concentrate. Nadia is both relieved and finds it endearing that you were trying so hard.

It both gives you the opportunity to relax because in reality the both of you were ready to burst from your respective troubles, but from that moment on Nadia is a bit more at ease with whatever ends up happening.

Although she did not expect to lose you midway through the palace tour.

An hour later she found you in the kitchens talking the chef’s ear off.

Over time she’s become less worried when you wander off (to be honest she can’t blame you, a lot of the things she has to do through the day are so tedious) but the servants have a great system for letting her know where you are.

Over time Nadia has come to adore your restless nature, it makes life all the more interesting when you’re up for an adventure that most people would shy always from.

Given that the two of you both just seem to live in the present you make the perfect pair between Nadia’s calming serenity and your energetic energy, it’s like your made to keep the other strong.

Julian

Your ADHD wasn’t necessarily the first thing Julian noticed about you but he notices how distracted you get when there’s a lot going on.

Not that he minds, he finds it quite charming that you are so interested in what's going on around you, and it’s certainly helpful having an extra pair of eyes.

And if he’s being honest he could listen to you ramble about random things all day, he finds it oddly comforting and lying back with you as you fiddle with his hands and talk is just comforting.

And it’s so strange because he thought he took ages to get some sleep in, but you? He’s impressed and worried about your up from dusk till dawn habits.

He learned three things over that week: 1) Hide the coffee, 2) Remove distractions and 3) No matter how interesting your chatter gets he has to resist encouraging you on, for your own sake and sleep’s sake.

Of course he worries about you, he knows that ADHD can be a difficult obstacle through daily life and in a place like Vesuvia those obstacles could go any which way.

What if impulsivity gets you in trouble? What if you forget to eat? What if you’re feeling down and he’s useless at comforting you? So many ‘what if’s?’ that they make him feel like he’s not cut out for it.

But when you forget something because you got distracted and Julian reminds you what you were doing, those ‘What if’s?’ don’t seem to matter as much.

Muriel

Muriel doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with you really, sure you talk a lot, but then compared to him everyone does.

Other than that you just seem to be really invested in whatever is going on in the forest, always alert and noticing the small details, like the sound of baby birds in their nest or the sound of the stream 100 yards away.

Your ADHD seems to just make you fit nicely into Muriel’s lifestyle and he likes the company even if you are noisy and tell him stuff that is weird.

But like he’s said before you’re weird, and he really likes that.

But he definitely finds it strange that you are reading five books at once, the stack keeps falling over.

Also he’s just the perfect person to keep you grounded, and he has a routine (which is more than you can say for yourself) and that routine helps you manage the disorganized chaos you often find yourself in.

Not to mention he’s strong enough to wrap you in a bear hug and keep it that way so you get at least a couple of hours sleep, fortunately your daily hikes seem to get you tired enough for that.

What Muriel finds so wildly interesting is the fact that although your ADHD can make you space out or distracted, once you’re hyper focused on a project you just sit there and do it. Enjoying every second that you’re buried in a book or carefully weaving a flower crown to put on Muriel’s head. You’re weird, but he loves that.

Portia

You are the perfect person to keep up with Portia, and being with her is like a non-stop conversation (the only difference being that Portia knows to go to sleep after midnight).

What’s more she has lots of things for you to focus on that allow you to both talk and keep your hands busy, gardening has been especially helpful as it feels productive and calming.

Not to mention you get to spoil each other with pretty flower arrangements or interesting bugs that you find.

But Portia is an oddly organized person, maybe because her own life has a lot going on in it, but she is great at reminding you to do things you may have forgot.

The notes she leaves you are always cute and remind you that to eat a banana at the very least or that you need to make sure you go to the market to pick up the bread for dinner.

Also she has a cuckoo clock, which does indeed make a sound to remind you of the time. You have yet to find a place in the cottage that you can’t hear it from so it works perfectly to keep you on track.

Portia’s favourite thing you do (once she figured it out) was when your were talking to yourself in your head, one moment you’re saying ‘that’s a nice embroidery (of an apple)’ and the next you say ‘I’m going to go climb a tree’. She quickly realized you were having a conversation in you head but it cracks her up all the time.

Lucio

He was not prepared for you, he comes back from the dead and wants to talk about how horrible it was for him and then you change the topic to something so random he’s just like; “What?!”

When he gets the memo about the whole ADHD thing, he’s still not sure what it entails but at this point he’s afraid to ask (you’d probably get off topic anyway).

The first few weeks it drives him crazy, especially when you completely blank on the thing he was talking about three minutes ago or forget the dinner date he had set.

Lucio learned very quickly that he needed to not take things so personally.

What’s more he even began to plan things out with you properly, giving you a cute little diary to write things down in so you wouldn’t forget the next date he had planned.

Once you get down to it Lucio can be just as talkative, disruptive, and get just as distracted as you can be. It’s between the two of you to work things out properly because you can end up either understanding each other completely or having no idea what the other is saying/doing.

#the arcana #lucio #asra #muriel #nadia #portia #julian #apprentice #julian devorak #arcana #adhd #apperentice #mc #story #headcannon #headcanon

[quasithinking]

Gravity’s Rainbow: Part II: Section One

The first chapter is called "Beyond the Zero" and I don't know what that means yet. The chapter heading is followed by a quote from Wernher von Braun, the most famous German engineer who helped develop the V-2 rocket, a major character in this book. Like really major! The quote is some nonsense about how science has taught Wernher to believe unscientific pablum. That's important because a lot of this book relies on groups conducting paranormal research for reasons which become almost immediately apparent! This book is like an episode of The X-Files if The X-Files had too many characters with silly names and scenes which seamlessly slipped into different scenes from different times without warning you that everything you were reading has suddenly changed and now something else entirely is happening. The book opens like this: "A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now." After I got done giggling about a screaming coming all over the sky, I decided to think about it for awhile. Opening lines are important and you'd know that if you ever heard anybody say, "Call me Ishmael," and then nod twattishly as if they'd just recited four of Shakespeare's plays in a row. Or maybe one time somebody wanted you to think they were smart and so they said, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." If they really wanted you to think they were smart, they would continue with "It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness." But that's really gilding the lily a bit and also it's calling a bit too much attention to how A Tale of Two Cities has kind of a crappy opening. Is it really profound to say, "It was everything but it was also nothing. Think about that, prick!" Just a second. I have to make a note for a new book I just decided to write because I thought up that great opening line. Gravity's Rainbow starts off much better than those other dumb books I mentioned which I can pretend I've read because this is the Internet and you don't know me. These first two lines tell you something concrete about the setting. A scream is a warning or an indication of tragedy or catastrophe. It's a portent of danger. Also a portent: anything that comes screaming across the sky! That's why the next line says this has happened before. Portents of death and the end of the world are as common as terrible opening lines in novels. But the next line is all, "But hold up, Grandma! This isn't like any portent you've ever seen before! This is postmodernism!" The reason the current "portents" have nothing to compare them to now is that they don't portend doom after which doom follows. These new screaming portents kill before the warning comes. They travel faster than the speed of sound and so they smash into you and you die and then they scream their warning. Like, how is that fair?! The next line might be a bit confusing until you've come to reckon with the idea that the screaming portents kill before anybody knows they're coming. "It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre." Because the missile has already hit. Whoever was going to die, has died. Now it's time to get everybody to safety! I suppose there will be fire and rubble and stuff that you want to move people away from but that's just picking at nits. The modern age has found a new way to terrify people with the specter of death. Most people think, "Oh boy! I'll live life and then when death comes, I'll probably have time to prepare or I'll have lived a good life or I'll somehow be at peace with it." But now it's more like, "Oh boy! I'll live life and then...." Well, you're dead. Just like that! Bye bye! Most of my favorite books are about escaping the world rather than fighting back, books like Catch-22 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I sometimes include The Grapes of Wrath in that because in one sense, Tom Joad flees into the shadows while his family must struggle on. But inherent in his flight is that he'll always keep fighting against injustice. So while it's one of my favorite books, I can't keep grouping it with the others. But Pynchon might be starting out Gravity's Rainbow with the inherent idea that there will be no escape and there might not even be a chance to fight. What's going to happen to you is going to happen to you and, well, you've got a lot less control over that than you might feel good about. While being evacuated, the evacuees all think, "Is this the way out?" And the answer is no, not at all. The Evacuation "is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into." Each one, believing they're the only one to think it, thinks, "You didn't really believe you'd be saved. Come, we all know who we are by now. No one was ever going to take the trouble to save you, old fellow...." In this chaos, we are introduced to Captain Geoffrey Prentice, also known as Pirate. In the morning after the evacuation, he notices a V-2 vapor trail rising into the sky against the horizon. He knows that means only a matter of minutes before the V-2 slams into London. He thinks about warning somebody in authority, or waking those around him, but ultimately realizes he might as well put it from his mind and go about his business. If it's going to hit, he's already dead anyway. This is the setting which begins Gravity's Rainbow. It's heavy, like gravity! But it's not pretty like a rainbow. Maybe rainbows have negative attributes that I never learned. I know they're a symbol of God's pact to never again drown all mankind! Sometimes people say it's God's pact that he won't kill all mankind again but he's a shrewd businessman, that God, and specifically writes up in his contract that he won't drown them all. What a jerk. The last thought about the V-2 Pirate has in this section, before he simply wipes it all from his mind and gets to making banana breakfasts for everybody, is this: "What if it should hit exactly—ahh, no—for a split second you'd have to feel the very point, with the terrible mass above, strike the top of the skull...."

#Gravity's Rainbow #Thomas Pynchon

[lettersfromleslie]

SNOWED IN ONCE AGAIN / HAIL TO THE CHEETO / SQUARING OFF WITH THE CRO-MAGNONS? / I SURE HOPE NAZIS FEAR COLLAGES

Good God, where to begin? What a laugh - what was I saying again over the summer? …Oh, hum, yes, ominous ripples in the zeitgeist, eh? Well boyo, those ripples ain’t gonna cut it no more for a metaphor - I’d say by now it’s something of a typhoon… Christ, I doubt if bigger water metaphors are even gonna cut it at a time like this… More like a banshee wail of the collective psyche, eh? And there are no signs of it letting up anytime soon. Jesus, strange times! Clearly some sort of reassessment is necessary - reassess what, dammit?!

“COME AFTER ME, YOU FASCIST LOOFAH-FACED SHIT-GIBBON!” tweets the state senator, tagging the president. Is this real life, or are we living in a Hunter S. Thompson story? The initial unreal feeling has been shifting to a feeling of a sustained bad dream - in which even the manic gasps of people reminding one another that nothing is normal become a part of the daily routine. It’s creepy as hell. Life chugs on, of course, for better or for worse, and superficially little changes for those as of yet unaffected. As for myself, I’ve been protesting, hysterically following the news, but the day-to-day is largely unchanged… The only outward difference you’d notice about me, passing by in the subway, is a little sign saying “TODAY: 10% of earnings donated to the ACLU!” I’ve had that one up for a week now and I’ll be wiring over the balance every couple weeks… Hell, but how much good does that really do the psyche? More abstractions… And look at me now, I’m talking like the years have laid dust over this shit, it’s been what - Three weeks! Mother of God! Has it only been three weeks?!

And another thing, goddamnit! I forgot how cold this fucking place of mine gets in the winter! Return of the goddam igloo! I thought I was through with this crap! Right now it’s late at night and there’s a last gasp of a blizzard on, my windows are filled with snow and frost, icicles drip, drip, the gale goes whomp, whomp, on the thin glass, rattling the panes. A few seconds after every whomp I can feel the cool air emanating across the room from the surface of the glass and the cracks around it. I’ve got me a bottle of red wine wine to keep me warm and keep me company - quiet times like these get precious when you’re feeling so goddam unbalanced about things.

I didn’t start writing this just to bitch about politics, mind, but it tends to sorta froth out once you start opening up… Hell, might as well say it, I don’t feel fuckin good this winter! Not one bloody bit. That “bloody” was a forced concession. I’ve started swearing like an American, have you noticed? Can’t help it, Americans seem to swear more... vigorously somehow. So yeah. You goddam swine. I mean, of course winter’s always a bummer… but man, both generally and personally the year thus far has been downright sinister - aside from the fascist apocalypse there’s been a severe lack of funds, depressing dead-end romances, an unusually desperate homeless situation at my favourite busking spot… And then throw in the further complication of a wild attempted escape to New Orleans that went pretty much to hell… I couldn’t afford it, for one, but sometimes you gotta - so I scraped the bottom of the barrel and said my prayers and bought the ticket. First impressions: hallelujah! Not a bad word to say about the place, as far as I can make out Nola is as good a city as they come. Never been anywhere so instantly lovable. In fact I found myself falling head over heels pretty much the minute I arrived, although even now I’m not sure if I was falling for the city - its humid, mossy, cracked wonkiness, its big brown river with the weird foreign-named boats and rotting industrial swampage, the public drinking, bums and tubas and tambourines, etc - or whether I was falling for the girl who’d invited me.

I mean, both, I suppose, but it didn’t work out too well with the girl - stillborn lil romance, that one turned out to be. She went off one morning on a boat! Sailed off at the crack of dawn. Suppose there’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s what I tell people and it ain’t a lie. Oh well. I give her points for style. Let’s be real, I used to be the same way when I was on the road. Anyway, as a result I wound up arriving back in New York unexpectedly alone, stony broke, on the very day the goddam fascist shit-gibbon - I mean, these people know how to swear, man - on the very day the shitgibbon in chief got inaugurated. So with that delightful ambience surrounding me, I had about ten days to raise a thousand bucks busking in the subway, or I’d be badly in the hole… And just to make absolutely sure I drove myself completely bonkers along the way I also set myself the task of giving all the mixes for Sunny Kindsa Lies a facelift. And for good measure I spent the nights flinging a total of about thirty thousand or so words of sentimental drivel at the old diary. Whenever I’d have time during the days I’d join the good people in protesting the escalating drama of mr. Cheeto Benito. What a life!

Ten days of that and I was able to enter February a perfect model of miserable discipline. Rent paid, work done, deeply stressed-out and entirely wracked with nerves. Recovered from my holiday, in other words… Ha. We’re a week into February now and the only thing that’s changed is I haven’t been working so goddam hard and to tell the truth I don’t feel a hell of a lot better as a result. Snap out of it, boyo! 

I know what the thing to do is, and that’s to write it all out and make things that are Good and Real and True and all that jazz. I mean, I’m trying, to an extent, but to my intense irritation all that seems to come out is the usual self-involved melancholia, which is just about the last thing I want to give into right now. How do you write a protest song, exactly? Anyone? It doesn’t seem to be just me - I’ve yet to see any good protest music come out of this thing just yet. (I hate Father John Misty, so don’t come at me with that rubbish.)

Then again, all this protesting… As much as the voice in my head hisses “privilege!”, I suppose there is - or at least I have - the option of reading things at a more cosmic scale. I’m not really American, after all… I don’t have to deal with this shit, necessarily. Take Henry Miller. World War II breaking out didn’t have at all the usual effect on him… In his words,

”The thought of war drives people frantic, makes them quite cuckoo, even when they are intelligent and far-seeing … And it has another bad effect - it makes young people feel guilty and conscience-stricken. In Corfu I had been studying the antics of a superbly healthy young Englishman, a lad of twenty or so, who had intended to be a Greek scholar. Now he was running around like a chicken with its head off begging to have someone put him in the frontline to blow him to smithereens…”

Who knows, maybe the kid did get blown to smithereens. A bunch of healthy young Englishmen did, and fuck knows I’m grateful - who knows what the hell kind of lives we’d be leading right now if they hadn’t. But Miller just took one look at it all and decided the world had gone fucking bananas... An extremely sordid bout of temporary insanity… An embarrassment, in short. Clearly he didn’t want to be killed; he didn’t want to kill anyone; better hole up somewhere in Greece a while till it all blew over a bit. I’m sure he got bawled out for it plenty, the usual charges, “coward,” “hypocrite,” “traitor”… But if you read his books it’s perfectly obvious that he never really considered himself to have any allegiance to his country anyway, or even his epoch - or any epoch, for that matter. I reckon he’d consider himself to have as much of an allegiance to America as he had an allegiance to the Babylonians, or the Romans, or the Cro-Magnons. There’s something to that, although I can’t square it, myself… I mean, I don’t think that’s me, I reckon I do have that headless-chicken empathy and tribal solidarity that we all value in a good healthy young citizen… But all the same, part of me feels Miller’s way is the right way. Once you take the cosmic view it does all get a bit daft. None of that would make for much of a protest song, though. You don’t write songs for those who have the luxury to leave when the flames get too hot. You write songs for the burning.

I was reading that book when I was in Greece, by the by, while I was writing you about those ominous ripples. The Colossus of Maroussi. Fantastic book - Miller’s best, in my opinion, or at any case his best-realised. Oh, God, I don’t know. I’ll be here, in New York I mean… I know I will, selling my booklets of collages and lyrics, singing my songs, scrambling at the rungs of that greasy ol ladder. What else is there? And spring’ll be soon and that’ll be a whole other thing. Etc, etc, etc.