Petergiaquinta > Recent Status Updates

And of course this:
“…there were also plenty of reverend celebrities, particularly large-city pastors whose sermons were reported in the newspapers every Monday morning, to whom Corpoism had given a chance to be noisily and lucratively patriotic.”

In one more uncanny parallel to the sad state of affairs going on right now, these home-grown fascists have their sights set on taking over Greenland.

Fascinating dig at William Randolph Hearst…this is long before my day, but apparently his publications were the Fox News of the time. Also, Wikipedia informs me he was a supporter of Hitler, sigh. Here, Lewis gives us a list of the writers and journalists imprisoned by the Corpo regime, followed by:

“Few writers for Hearst were arrested, however.”

“Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn ‘reasonable’ and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to stop and speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.”

As our economy crumbles, the MAGAts cheer their cult leader. And Lewis had it all down 80 years ago: “[Windrip talking to his moron supporters] told them they were the honored foundation stones of a New Civilization, the advance guards of the conquest of the whole world….And they had the Jews and the Negroes to look down on, more and more….Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.”

And yet it is…

“Naught’s Cave” plays an important role in this narrative, more negation and the negation of negation in Everett’s work. I’m reminded of Dr. No and I Am Not Sidney Poitier, two more obvious examples of this curious motif running through his novels.

I wanted to mark the death of Tom Robbins with a reread of one of those great books of his I loved so much back in the day. Cowgirls would have been my pick, but 35 years later the Middle East is still a shithole of conflict, so Skinny Legs it is.

Mike Pence (or his stand-in) makes his second appearance in an Everett novel. Says Sill: “Nobody gives a flying fuck about the vice president. Anyway, I hated that pigmentally challenged son of a bitch.”

This isn’t the strangest book I’ve ever read, but it would make the Top Ten list. Father Damien’s cameo was certainly not anticipated.

“You know why Baptists don’t fuck standing up?” Dill asked.
“Tell me.”
“They’re afraid somebody might think they’re dancin’.”

“Stop making fun of White people,” MBI Director Lester Safer tells his two special detectives after they observe that the Hattiesburg Confederate monument looks like a big white dick.

This same directive will no doubt be issued to Percival Everett by the incoming Trump administration in lieu of a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“If you want to know a place, you talk to its history,” Mama Z said.

Boy howdy. If you don’t recognize the names of the peckerwood white trash in the first couple of pages, you are going to misunderstand everything going on here. This is some crazy shit here 😆😝😆💀.

Ahab to the Carpenter: “the gravedigger in the play sings, spade in hand. dost thou never?”

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”

What would an epic tale be without an epic simile?
Here’s Ishmael attending to the shirt-cockin’ Queequeg on the dead whale’s back:
“You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist.”

“So, let me tell you, when humans are lost in space, it takes only five minutes to reach totalitarianism.”

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.”

“Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable.”

“It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.”

Not sure why they did this, but this collection of 1-6 of The Dreamjng uses the same cover as Sandman Universe 1, which is pages 1-46 of this volume. Need a scorebook…

And here it is.

This is undoubtedly not what I’m holding in my hands, but it will suffice as a placeholder. I am reading The Best of Cruiskeen Lawn by Myles na gCopaleen: A Collection of Columns on the 50th Anniversay of Brian O’Nolan’s Death, an eBook from The Irish Times, selected and introduced by Frank McNally.

Day 14:
Mother from newly arrived family—rambling nonsensical drivel about their visit to Dominican Republic, the Teller, and their eviction back in the U.S. Just awful.
Ramboz—lunatic asylum, discovery of great aunt Charlotte’s diagnosis
Super’s father—wife’s suicide, Super’s pet grackle
Final revelation

Day 13:
The Super—Priya the lesbian Cowgirl cuts off the arm of a rapist professor
Darrow—confession of murder and burial of a tweaker who killed his dog, Poseidon

Day 12–
The Poet—Pandemic reading group hosted by two writing students discussing Decameron; participants can’t appreciate Boccaccio or Chaucer or Petrarch…hilarious look at contemporary values negating classic literature
Whitney (#2)—art appraisal at a dying woman’s home, coffin lid hanging on wall
Pardner (Pardis’s daughter)—two ghosts, Midnight Special

Probably the best day for stories

Day 11:
Amnesia (#3)—acting gig
The Lady with the Rings—Acting for brother (1)
Morty Gund—stand up comic, suicide?
The Lady with the Rings—acting as J Cavanaugh (2)

Day 10:
Maine #2—Elijah Vick and the alligator gar
Tango #2–Lady in White in Corvette
Spider woman—her transformation and work as an exterminator

Sudden and strange shift, but at least something interesting has finally happened in this dull book.

Day 9:
Newcomer—Chinese grad student, lost friendship
Whitney (#2)—travels abroad, in Afghanistan
Hello Kitty (#2)—dog walking, Buster, tarts