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Things Kazantzakis
In The i Tetralogy I use a quotation from Kazantzakis’ Report to Greco in at least two places. It reads: “Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!” It all comes to rest in that sterling quotation mark. It is one of three quotations that Kazantzakis uses in the first pages of his extraordinary autobiographical confession, probably the best of the Twentieth Century, some ranking it with St. Augustine’s. The concept of transcendence inflamed my spirit for a long while, going as far back as the earlier 70s. So this genius touched me with his challenges for living a…
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I Am Curious
I am sitting here as the computer went dead and I lost the entire blog. You can’t do that with a typewriter or pen and pencil. Aggravating and annoying, the brave new world we live in, with the minds and bodies of our ancestors of the Stone Age all wrapped up in technology, “I am Borg.” Yes, we are hive creatures, swarming from IPod to Blackberry to XBox. I was attempting to say before I was rudely deleted that we go through the day often without checking in. We do not dialogue with ourselves. We flee the interior monologue. We don’t…
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What is the name of that wiry, nutty creature that fawned over Jabba the Hutt?
Having read my blogs of late, Jane has decided to keep me honest; she has the brainpower and dry wit to see through cant. And she knows when I am being preposterous, pompous as well as grandiose. That’s what I need, a built-in critic! So as she reads these blogs she cuts through the layers of fat, rearranges my thought processes and tells me I have delivered a baby by breech — shove it back in and deliver it properly, oh master of words and wit. You will occasionally, I’ve been told, see her comment upon these blogs — “The…
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I Am Feeling Enthused
Correspondence with reviewers and bloggers of late has been encouraging; new ideas are coming to mind as I sit here in Ahab’s cabin, trying to encompass the world in my driven search for the great white whale; do you recall John Huston’s film in the fifties where you hear Ahab’s pegleg thumping on the deck as the crew below (Richard Basehart,”Ishmael,” for one) listens? I have no idea why this association to Moby Dick. . .Oh, yes, I see. So here I am doing Larry David, unwilling to accept the joyful optimism which is the harbinger of daily life. Oh, please, edit that…