Midnight on Monday
Is there no market for Mencken in this republic?
I went to the mall today. I wanted to buy a new pair of running shoes and a collection of H.L. Mencken's writing. Any collection would have been suitable; I simply wanted it to have around. The man's legacy is to American prose what Shakespeare is to everything else. But there was no collection to be found. All such volumes listed in the computer directory were out-of-print. Such a damned shame. I'll put a link to one of his most famous pieces at the bottom of this post.
I did manage to buy a snazzy new pair of running shoes. Asics GT 2100s, to be exact. They sound like Italian compact cars. They run a little bit better - good shock absorption in the heel, which is an indispensible asset when you've been noticing a little soreness in your Achilles' tendon while running in your old shoes. I ran a different route today - down Cayuga Heights road and back again. On the return leg, I decided to run up the Thurston Avenue hill. Nearly killed me, but damn if I didn't feel good when I got to the top. I looked up the total mileage of my run when I got back to the apartment. Only three miles, and it took me nearly thirty minutes, which is a pathetic pace. If I'm going to get serious about this running thing, I'll have to quit smoking. Lord help me.
I made one more purchase today - the Special Edition DVD of Raging Bull. My God, what an incredible movie that is. DeNiro rose to the highest level in my personal aesthetic pantheon with that performance: he made me want to act. Most of my experiences with movie watching leave me thinking that I could have done it better than the actors in the film. Not Raging Bull - it's one of those rare acting performances to whose level I can only hope to rise someday: an incredibly perfect blend of subtlety and raw, visceral intensity; a character portrait so truly, precisely detailed, the actor etches it into the core of the celluloid itself. I don't know how even to begin approaching that kind of effort.
Actively Hating Apathy, Part III will appear later in the week. I'm feeling a distinct lack of passion for the subject and I'm not going to look for it right now; but writing the is great, engrossing fun and I hope I can find the discipline to finish it.
Here's a link to H.L. Mencken's obituary of William Jennings Bryan - it is one of the most vicious, surgical eviscerations of a public figure's reputation ever written. I only wish Mencken were alive today to cover the goings on within the GOP.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/menck05.htm#SCOPESC
This piece was written hours after Bryan had died, mere days removed from his infamous Waterloo: humiliated under cross-examination by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Monkey Trial. More to come later, as always.
I went to the mall today. I wanted to buy a new pair of running shoes and a collection of H.L. Mencken's writing. Any collection would have been suitable; I simply wanted it to have around. The man's legacy is to American prose what Shakespeare is to everything else. But there was no collection to be found. All such volumes listed in the computer directory were out-of-print. Such a damned shame. I'll put a link to one of his most famous pieces at the bottom of this post.
I did manage to buy a snazzy new pair of running shoes. Asics GT 2100s, to be exact. They sound like Italian compact cars. They run a little bit better - good shock absorption in the heel, which is an indispensible asset when you've been noticing a little soreness in your Achilles' tendon while running in your old shoes. I ran a different route today - down Cayuga Heights road and back again. On the return leg, I decided to run up the Thurston Avenue hill. Nearly killed me, but damn if I didn't feel good when I got to the top. I looked up the total mileage of my run when I got back to the apartment. Only three miles, and it took me nearly thirty minutes, which is a pathetic pace. If I'm going to get serious about this running thing, I'll have to quit smoking. Lord help me.
I made one more purchase today - the Special Edition DVD of Raging Bull. My God, what an incredible movie that is. DeNiro rose to the highest level in my personal aesthetic pantheon with that performance: he made me want to act. Most of my experiences with movie watching leave me thinking that I could have done it better than the actors in the film. Not Raging Bull - it's one of those rare acting performances to whose level I can only hope to rise someday: an incredibly perfect blend of subtlety and raw, visceral intensity; a character portrait so truly, precisely detailed, the actor etches it into the core of the celluloid itself. I don't know how even to begin approaching that kind of effort.
Actively Hating Apathy, Part III will appear later in the week. I'm feeling a distinct lack of passion for the subject and I'm not going to look for it right now; but writing the is great, engrossing fun and I hope I can find the discipline to finish it.
Here's a link to H.L. Mencken's obituary of William Jennings Bryan - it is one of the most vicious, surgical eviscerations of a public figure's reputation ever written. I only wish Mencken were alive today to cover the goings on within the GOP.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/menck05.htm#SCOPESC
This piece was written hours after Bryan had died, mere days removed from his infamous Waterloo: humiliated under cross-examination by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Monkey Trial. More to come later, as always.
posted by Dr. Chuck | 12:09 AM
1 Comments:
In the words of my "colorful" (meaning senile) professor, "It's a shame more people don't know about Mencken. If they did - then more people would know about him."
Post a Comment
<< Home