Mr. James > Recent Status Updates

Now and then, on one side or the other, stone stairs, with puddles on the steps, which gave me a strange sensation of fear, would descend into misty abysses, whence issued whistles, the rattle of dishes, the clatter of typewriters, the ring of hammers, and many other sounds, as if, down there, were exposition halls of some kind or other, already closing or not yet completed. -- VN

I lost my way for a moment among some enormous marble legs, and twice ran around a giant knee before I again caught sight of M. Godard, who was looking for me behind the white ankle of a neighboring giantess. Here a person in a bowler, who must have clambered up her, suddenly fell from a great height to the stone floor. -- VM

He turned out to be a thin, middle-aged gentleman in high collar and dickey, with a pearl in the knot of his tie, and a face very much resembling a Russian wolfhound; as if that were not enough, he was licking his chops in a most doglike manner, while sticking a stamp on an envelope... -- VN

"The treasures of the museum are the pride of the city," replied the old man, "and pride is not for sale." -- VN

Everything was as it should be: gray tints, the sleep of substance, matter dematerialized. -- VN

A Terrible Vengeance: After a soft kiss on the cheek, she'll slit her father's throat. Even the Devil deserves a daughter's love.

"Why doesn't my father come? Doesn't he know it is time he was stabbed to death? I suppose he expects me to go for him..." -- NG

Art heals imperfection, like a cowboy who carries a rusty revolver and cries at the sight of a hungry horse.

Smothered in the green foliage, they [the woods], and the wild flowers, too, crowd together along the margin of the flowering waters and, bending over, gaze into them, never for a moment tiring of the pastime, never for a moment averting their admiring, radiant glances from the stream, and they smile at it and greet it, waving their branches. But they dare not look into the Dnieper midstream [...]. -- NG

dork (dôrk) n. 1. an odd, socially awkward, unstylish person. 2. Slang: A stupid, inept, or foolish person. 3. Vulgar Slang: Male genitalia. 4. A used car salesman that thinks he's Tony Soprano. 5. Stephen King. 6. A high school librarian that wears a top hat.

"Daughter, for Christ's sake spare one glance at your guilty father. Why, even the savage wolf cubs will never tear their mother to pieces!" She paid no attention to him and walked on. "Daughter, for the sake of your unhappy mother..." She stopped. "For the sake of your unhappy mother come here and listen to my last words." -- NG

And it is no wonder you did not see everything that was in your dream. You don't know a tenth part of what your soul knows. Do you know that your father is the Antichrist? -- NG

I'll give Omri credit for showing restraint. If Little Bro started stabbing me while he was in my pocket, I'd do more than swear at him. He'd be a jelly sandwich, spread between the sidewalk and the sole of my boot. Little Bear is a little shit.

Oh, such a queer dream, and it was plain as though it were really happening. I dreamt that my father was the very same monster whom we saw at the Captain's house. But please don't pay any attention to this dream. People dream all sorts of silly things! I dreamed that I was standing before him, shivering and frightened, my whole body tortured by every word he spoke. Oh, if only you had heard what he said... -- NG

Omri is taking Little Bear to school in his pocket. WTF? Being a retired adolescent boy, the worst place to keep anything is your pocket. All it takes is for Omri to graze the school bus headrest and LB will be bloody gut squash, or at least, have a dozen broken bones. Regardless, if Little Bro were in my pocket, he'd end up in the washing machine.

Oh the irony: Imagine Stephen King telling Richard Bachman to murder a room full of corporate executives because he didn't want to get his hands dirty.

You bring to life a three inch plastic indian, causing all kinds of shit to go sideways. Naturally, the next logical step is to bring to life a three inch cowboy. The deductive reasoning of adolescent boys is uncanny... meaning stupid.

Well, Omri is a murderer. Yay! He's feeling the consequences of being a god. He's also learning that Little Bear is a little tyrant: he wants what he wants when he wants it.

That reminded him -- where was the horse? He looked around in a fright. But he soon saw it, trying forlornly to eat the carpet. "I must get it some grass," thought Omri, meanwhile offering it a small piece of stale bread, which it ate gratefully, and then some water in a tin lid. It was odd how the horse was not frightened of him. Perhaps it couldn't see him very well. -- LRB

If you could bring a plastic object to life, who or what would it be? I know who I'd bring to life... and it's a very bad idea.

King's side gig at the laundromat is paying off. He can't get stains out of your blood soaked t-shirt, but he'll make a badass tie-dye.

Studies in American Africanism, in my view, should be investigations of the ways in which a non-white, Africanist presence and personae have been constructed -- invented -- in the United States, and of the literary uses this fabricated presence has served. -- TM

An author is not personally accountable for that acts of fictive creatures, although he is responsible for them. And there is no evidence I know of to persuade me that Hemingway shared Harry's views. In point of fact there is strong evidence to suggest otherwise. -- TM

During a passionate scene of lovemaking [...]. Marie asks her husband:
"Listen, did you ever do it with a *** wench."
"Sure."
"What's it like."
"Like nurse shark."
This extraordinary remark is saved and savored for Hemingway's description of a black female. The strong notion here is that of a black female as the furthest thing from human, so far away as to be not even mammal but fish. -- TM

... for not only is the Hemingway Ranger invariably accompanied but his Tontos, his nursemen, are almost always black. From the African bearers who tote the white man's burden in the hunting grounds of Africa, to the bait cutters aboard fishing boats, to loyal companions of decaying boxers, to ministering bartenders -- the array of enabling black nursemen is impressive. -- TM

The solution is an awkward, oddly constructed sentence: "The *** was still talking her out and I looked and saw he had seen a patch of flying fish burst out ahead." "Saw he had seen" is improbable in syntax [...] and tense but, like other choices available to Hemingway, it is risked to avoid a speaking black. The problem this writer gives himself, then, is to say how one sees that someone else has already seen. -- TM

4. Fetishization. This is especially useful in evoking erotic fears or desires and establishing fixed and major difference where difference does not exist... Blood, for example, is a pervasive fetish: black blood, white blood, the purity of blood; the purity of white female sexuality, the pollution of African blood... Fetishization is a strategy often used to assert the absolutism of civilization and savagery. -- TM

What is not stressed is that there is no way, given the confines of the novel, for Huck to mature into a moral human being in America without Jim. To let Jim go free, to let him enter the mouth of the Ohio River and pass into free territory, would be to abandon the whole premise of the book. Neither Huck nor Twain can tolerate, in imaginative terms, Jim freed. That would blast the predilection from its mooring. -- TM

The major controversies about the greatness or near greatness of Huckleberry Finn as a American (or even "world") novel exist as controversies because they forgo a close examination of the interdependence of slavery and freedom, of Huck's growth and Jim's serviceability within it, and even of Mark Twain's inability to continue, to explore the journey into free territory. -- TM

Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not dammed, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny. -- TM