Susan Miller’s description of her Parrot Fever in this month’s Gemini horoscope is the best bit of authorial intrusion I’ve seen in a while. If I ever survived Parrot Fever I probably would be working it into everyone’s horoscopes too.
I love Emma’s column. Also might have (appalling) new crush on Boris Johnson? Terrible politics, serial philandering, lack of physical attraction aside.
Near the end of Out of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer mentions a D.H. Lawrence letter that he describes as Lawrence’s “grouchiest letter ever - the grouchiest letter ever?” and a “masterpiece” of irritability. Dyer quotes choice bits from the letter; but if you were ever curious about how the whole thing read, here it is. I hunted it up at the library a while back. It was written to Lawrence’s friend Earl Brewster in 1921, the same year this photo of him and Frieda was taken. (Photo via.)
To E.H. Brewster, from Fontana Vecchia, Taormina, 2 November 1921
Dear Brewster: Yours and Achsah’s from beyond Crete received today: and by coincidence, one from Alpha. So the family voice was uplifted in one strain on this feast-day of All-Souls. Anyhow you’ve got as far as Port Said.
No, I don’t understand a bit what you mean about rightness and about relationships and about the world. Damn the world, anyhow. And I have ‘understanding’ people, and I hate more still to be understood. Damn understanding more than anything. I refuse to understand you. Therefore you can say what you like, without a qualm, and never bother to alter it. I shan’t understand.
Today was the second anniversary of my dad’s death. I made an agreement with my mom early on that we weren’t going to mark this day, but instead his birthday (which falls in January), but nevertheless I’ve been counting down the past few weeks, and I can tell she has been too. My dad was a really funny person; I wish, if my memory was going to turn out so faulty, I’d written down more of the things he said (I sympathize with what Zadie Smith wrote about her dad here). This isn’t the funniest story about him – I’m not sure it’s even funny at all so much as indicative of one part of his personality – but it’s in my head tonight so here it is.
Longreads: The Awl's Choire Sicha, Carrie Frye, Alex Balk: Our Top Longreads of 2011 -
There’s this little moment in Ted Hughes’ collected letters when, shortly after he and Sylvia Plath got married, he’s writing to his sister and he says, Sylvia’s “had some good fortune lately. She sold a long rather bad poem to The Atlantic Monthly, which is one of the Mags in America, for $50. Then, last week, Poetry Chicago accepted six of her poems - one or two of them her best, and her best is good - and is making an official debut.” A footnote clarifies that the “long rather bad poem” is “Pursuit,” i.e., the poem that Plath skipped class to write after meeting Hughes at a party in Cambridge. Full version here; abridged here (including worst/best lines):
“There is a panther stalks me down:
One day I’ll have my death of him. …
Bright those claws that mar the flesh
And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs.
His ardor snares me, lights the trees,
And I run flaring in my skin. …
The panther’s tread is on the stairs,
Coming up and up the stairs.”
I’ve had “The Pursuit” pretty much by heart since forever (It’s included in The Young Girl’s Very Moody Primer, Chapter 4. Frisson) and I don’t think in all that time I’ve ever paused to consider whether it’s a good or “long rather bad” poem—it’s always just been one of The Poems; a foundation text. It’s so jarring (and yet funny) to see Hughes dismiss it with a wave of the hand like that. (But it’s about you you you!) Something here about history as experienced versus history as viewed second-hand.
(Source: theawl)
Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?
