Steve Kierstead > Recent Status Updates

(SPOILERS, I guess:)

Lots of parallels to Camus. Murder of a random person, time in prison contemplating the sky, quality time with newspaper clippings.

Overlapping perspectives: Was Meursault real or fictional? He was both and neither. Likewise "the Arab" whom Meursault killed, Musa. And the narrator is the brother of the fictional/real victim, and he has carried around the guilt and resentment and responsibility and grief of his brother's death for 50 years, always aware of and ashamed in front of his mother and her grief.

More to come.

Overlapping perspectives: Was Meursault real or fictional? He was both and neither. Likewise "the Arab" whom Meursault killed, the narrator's brother, Musa. And the narrator is the brother of the fictional/real victim, and he has carried around the guilt and resentment and responsibility and grief of his brother's death for 50 years, always aware of and ashamed in front of his mother and her grief.

More to come.

Overlapping perspectives: Was Meursault real or fictional? He was both and neither. Likewise "the Arab" whom Meursault killed. And the narrator is the brother of the fictional/real victim, and he has carried around the guilt and resentment and responsibility and grief of his brother's death for 50 years, always aware of and ashamed in front of his mother and her grief.

More to come.

I had to edit the Foote passage above. Here it is:

It was the honor-bound code of the Old South. One’s people before one’s principles. The straitjacket of scorn and stigma. “It’s a bunch of shit really,” Foote conceded. “But all Southerners subscribe to this code to some degree, at least male Southerners of my generation.”

Seems to me that putting loyalty before right and wrong opens the door to terrible things.

Shelby Foote said some interesting things:

His great-grandfather had opposed secession but fought without hesitation for the South. “Just as I would have,” Foote said. “I’d be with my people, right or wrong. If I was against slavery, I’d still be with the South.
...
It was the honor-bound code of the Old South. One’s people before one’s principles....

I hear this from Tim Howell. I don't get it. Tribalism.

My son Alex and his buddy Ryan Rambow have got big into Camus over the last few years. Especially Ryan.

I came across an NYRB review (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/...) of The Meursault Investigation, which takes off from Camus' The Stranger. The narrator is the younger brother of "the Arab" killed by Meursault in Camus' original. I'm anxious to see how it develops.

My friend Steve Anderson recommended this book. I thought I might find something other than open racism underneath the enthusiasm for Civil War reenactments, and there is some other, but the striking theme so far is simple white pride and cultural division . Oof!

My second time through. Simple, powerful, valuable.

When I read Eric Alterman's "Sound and Fury" many years ago, he praised the work of Walter Lippmann as someone who understood early on some crucial points about how people perceive public events and how the media can help or hinder that understanding. Let's read Lippmann and see first-hand what he has to say.

This guy is exhausting! There's no place to stop and take a breath. He just continues the narrative page after page after page. Every time you think you're arriving at the end of a thought he just starts another bit...