By Insisting on Love We Spoil It

I was in the longest, broadest, widest, deepest, most comprehensively dire black mood I've experienced, building since 1959, and then I went to work Monday morning.

At 5:45 PM April 12, 2010 in the staff lounge of Gauinger Library, Leorgetown, I come upon this:

In one of Scouffas's classes [at the University of Illinois in 1950], Stanley met a writer who hadn't changed his mind about becoming a journalist. Robert Novak, a syndicated columnist and one of two member of the class of 1952 to be later awarded an honorary doctorate by the university (the other was Elkin), recalls something special about his classmate during their first creative writing seminar. Because Scouffas encouraged workshop practices, there was intense interaction among the students, and Novak found Elkin's writing challenging, often brilliant. As they critiqued each other's original compositions and those of their classmates, it became clear that this was an "interesting fellow' and during the next few months "we became friendly."

    - Shouting Down the Silence: A Biography of Stanley Elkin, p 24.

Stanley Elkin - my favorite novelist - and Robert Novak - a pioneer TV pig, a kingpig among pigs - college buddies.

My apologies to the two of you who took the brunt of this. I think I've caught my balance, snapped back my perspective.

O! Dougherty in the intro says Elkin was considered liberal voted Democratic in as little as he gave a shit. Hmmm....

O! Yes, the entire biography is as poorly written as the excerpted paragraph above. I mean, thanks for the bio, but you couldn't afford an editor?

• Cult of Killing.
• One solution to no more Gitmos.
• On Capitalist Realism. You know, analyzing the problem is fine, suggesting solutions is fine, expecting them to work? Not so much.
• The fabulous life of ravenous vultures.
• Looting Main Street.
• Timed recovery?
• Capitalism as intelligent design.
• Oops!
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• All you need to know about the world in which you live and why you're nobody: Kathleen Parker wins a Pulitzer.
• More here.
• An errant critique of Pastor Sanctimonious. Here's the correct critique: He should be brained with a shovel.
• UPDATE! What the fuck is this fucking shit?
• Yawn.
• Problems and non-problems.
• Ironically, most ironies aren't ironic.
• Making jesters into kings.
• Good for?
• Survival of the oppressive fittest.
• A successful grifter, but a grifter nonetheless.

• Ehrlich targets.... MOCO?
• MOCO blegger panel? 
• Why not shut down M St on weekends?
• Fucking police.
• I can vouch for the Flying Dog.
• Frostburg State!
• Not as bad as JMU.

• On bones and libraries.
• Turning pages. Digital wins. To pretend this is a distinction worth a difference is to disavow analog beliefs. Now, sales? That's another issue.
• Jack Gilbert, part three.
• What publishers want.
• UPDATE! New Broken Social Scene!
  
• Why the fuck is Jack White on my radio?
• UPDATE! New Broken Social Scene!
• Obscure Sound's Best of March.
• O! Heard three cuts off new LCD Soundsystem, coming in May, and I will be (in the privacy of my living room) dancing.
• Tallest Man on Earth.
• Moka's Best of 2000s. (Does not include any Jack White.)

UPDATE! I am reminded!

Today's Listening Assignment.
    Today's Listening Assignment.
        Today's Listening Assignment.
            Today's Listening Assignment.
                Today's Listening Assignment.
                    Today's Listening Assignment.
                        Today's Listening Assignment.
                            Today's Listening Assignment.
                                Today's Listening Assignment.
                                    Today's Listening Assignment.
                                         Today's Listening Assignment.
                                             Today's Listening Assignment.
                                                  Today's Listening Assignment.

TEAR IT DOWN

Jack Gilbert

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever: