And then before ya know it, it’s Week #3.
Continuing a longstanding Deathmarch tradition, I’m now a tad behind. In good company there, from what I hear — a few stalwart marchers have had a little trouble getting their books and will be joing us mid-trail. Still having a swell time though and hope youse are being likewise regaled. Cowboys too? Oh come on now. Next week: Let’s meet up at the bottom page 168 (Dalkey), right in the middle of a “glorious extravagance.”
7 comments for “The At Swim-Two-Birds Deathmarch, Week 3”
cort
August 30, 2005 at 11:01 am
Thank you, Fenianophiles, for cluing me in to the mysteries of Conan (referring back to week 2).
Here’s something I found in a book called “A Celtic Miscellany.” It’s called “The Wild Man’s Life,” it’s from the 1100’s, one of several Wild Man entries given:
“…A dismal life, to be without a house, it is a sad life, dear Christ! food of green-topped perennial water-cress, drink of cold water from the clear brook.
Falling out of the tops of withered boughs, roaming through the gorse, in very truth; shunning humans, befriending wolves, running with the brown stag over the plain.
Sleeping at night in the wood, without a quilt, in the crest of a thick bushy tree, without listening to human voice or speech; O son of God, it is a great grief!
I run a course giddily to the peak–few have surpassed me in vigor! I have lost my looks, which were unexcelled; O son of God, it is a great grief!”
…interesting!! (Tho perhaps it could have been called “The wild man loses his looks”?)
I’ll take the other side – I’m a little ahead.
One piece of advice – mark page 85. I find myself referencing it repeatedly.
Once you get into the flow of this thing, it is easier to tell what kind of passage you are in (narrator v. Trellis v. Trellis’s characters).
I am deliriously happy to find that my pagination is out of step with both Cecil and Dr Vitz (my Dalkey edition is “Third Printing 2005” and the last page is 239). So I can march to a solo drummer, apparently; beyond the beat of the Good Fairy’s wings, I hear the steps of my fellow marchers only in the distance through the brambly forest.
Everyone–literally everyone–in the book is a storyteller. Not just the narrator and the characters he invents at one degree or another (the pooka, the cowboys, Casey), but even those he does not purport to invent, such as Mr. Connors of the Committee, Byrne’s acquaintance Cryan, and even Byrne himself.
According to his references, the Raptor Mage is also ahead (though the pagination must be hard to put back together). And indeed – this does seem to be all about the storytelling. Of course, that is one of those traits stereotypically associated with the Irish.
Without giving anything away (I hope), I had to drop in this quotation from later in the book when our narrator tells us he ” avoided any charge that my work was somewhat far-fetched.”
I’m in! I’m finally IN! and way behind (like page 20–thank God for Labor Day), but laughing hard, and I did find a quote early on that plays well with Dr. Vitz’s above:
“… a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of his credulity.” (19, Pete’s edition)
Off-the-cuff farfetched interpretation of the title: oral storytelling (one bird) vs. the novel (two bird). In complaining about the “story-teller’s book-web” on p. 13, our mythic hero Finn, beloved of the bards of Eire, says:
“Who could think to turn the children of a king into white swans with the loss of their own bodies, to be swimming the two seas of Erin in snow and ice-cold rains without bards or chess-boards, without their own tongues for discoursing melodious Irish, changing the fat white legs of a maiden into plumes and troubling her body with shameful eggs?”
Besides the reference to birds and two seas, this hooks up well with our author’s stated preference for drama to the novel a few pages later, claiming that “the play was consumed in wholesome fashion by large masses in places of public resort; the novel was self-administered in private.” (19) The novelist’s art as a form of self-pleasuring, as the narrator’s uncle suspects our hero of indulging in within the confines of his bedroom in the novel’s opening scene?
Also, the tensions of the Irish writer (one bird) writing in English (two bird).
Out to lunch?
“the tensions of the Irish writer (one bird) writing in English (two bird)”
Those tensions are well documented, but if they’re here it’s the author using them as a device, not exemplifying them in himself. O’Brien (O’Nolan) was definitely a crossover case, completely at ease in either language; he wrote and published in both (sometimes even translating himself) and he argued at various times for one or the other depending on the circumstances.
Well, my better judgement suggested I shouldn’t join this march after all–I’ve got way too much work stuff to get done in too little time. Plus, when I said earlier that I had a copy of @S2B that I picked up last time I was in Dublin, I was (it turns out) lying. It seems I picked up quite a few of O’Brien’s ouvres in lovely Erin, but @S2B is not one of them.
After having identified this deficiency in my library & finding that my local B&Ns have neglected to stock this essential book, I determined to attempt to acquire a copy on my trip to Boston & NYC this week.
(Curiously, I did not find the book in the several Harvard Sq. bookstores I perused, but rather had to venture further, to the BU bookstore, which not only had quite a few copies, but, after identifying myself as an alumnus, granted me a generous discount on my purchase.)
So it happened that, at the conclusion of my business in NYC, being thoroughly relieved & deeply desirous to relax while waiting out the rush hour traffic before catching a bus back to Boston, I availed myself of the ingress of the nearest Irish bar, where I ordered a Guiness, and cracked open the copy of @S2B I had expectantly packed in my shoulder bag. I was well through the first two pages before my Guiness was properly poured and settled. A few more Guinesses, some shepherds pie, a Jameson, and, later, a couple of flights and I’m almost caught up.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that maybe I will tag along with all you other deathmarchers this time, after all.
Thank you, Fenianophiles, for cluing me in to the mysteries of Conan (referring back to week 2).
Here’s something I found in a book called “A Celtic Miscellany.” It’s called “The Wild Man’s Life,” it’s from the 1100’s, one of several Wild Man entries given:
“…A dismal life, to be without a house, it is a sad life, dear Christ! food of green-topped perennial water-cress, drink of cold water from the clear brook.
Falling out of the tops of withered boughs, roaming through the gorse, in very truth; shunning humans, befriending wolves, running with the brown stag over the plain.
Sleeping at night in the wood, without a quilt, in the crest of a thick bushy tree, without listening to human voice or speech; O son of God, it is a great grief!
I run a course giddily to the peak–few have surpassed me in vigor! I have lost my looks, which were unexcelled; O son of God, it is a great grief!”
…interesting!! (Tho perhaps it could have been called “The wild man loses his looks”?)
I’ll take the other side – I’m a little ahead.
One piece of advice – mark page 85. I find myself referencing it repeatedly.
Once you get into the flow of this thing, it is easier to tell what kind of passage you are in (narrator v. Trellis v. Trellis’s characters).
I am deliriously happy to find that my pagination is out of step with both Cecil and Dr Vitz (my Dalkey edition is “Third Printing 2005” and the last page is 239). So I can march to a solo drummer, apparently; beyond the beat of the Good Fairy’s wings, I hear the steps of my fellow marchers only in the distance through the brambly forest.
Everyone–literally everyone–in the book is a storyteller. Not just the narrator and the characters he invents at one degree or another (the pooka, the cowboys, Casey), but even those he does not purport to invent, such as Mr. Connors of the Committee, Byrne’s acquaintance Cryan, and even Byrne himself.
According to his references, the Raptor Mage is also ahead (though the pagination must be hard to put back together). And indeed – this does seem to be all about the storytelling. Of course, that is one of those traits stereotypically associated with the Irish.
Without giving anything away (I hope), I had to drop in this quotation from later in the book when our narrator tells us he ” avoided any charge that my work was somewhat far-fetched.”
I’m in! I’m finally IN! and way behind (like page 20–thank God for Labor Day), but laughing hard, and I did find a quote early on that plays well with Dr. Vitz’s above:
“… a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of his credulity.” (19, Pete’s edition)
Off-the-cuff farfetched interpretation of the title: oral storytelling (one bird) vs. the novel (two bird). In complaining about the “story-teller’s book-web” on p. 13, our mythic hero Finn, beloved of the bards of Eire, says:
“Who could think to turn the children of a king into white swans with the loss of their own bodies, to be swimming the two seas of Erin in snow and ice-cold rains without bards or chess-boards, without their own tongues for discoursing melodious Irish, changing the fat white legs of a maiden into plumes and troubling her body with shameful eggs?”
Besides the reference to birds and two seas, this hooks up well with our author’s stated preference for drama to the novel a few pages later, claiming that “the play was consumed in wholesome fashion by large masses in places of public resort; the novel was self-administered in private.” (19) The novelist’s art as a form of self-pleasuring, as the narrator’s uncle suspects our hero of indulging in within the confines of his bedroom in the novel’s opening scene?
Also, the tensions of the Irish writer (one bird) writing in English (two bird).
Out to lunch?
“the tensions of the Irish writer (one bird) writing in English (two bird)”
Those tensions are well documented, but if they’re here it’s the author using them as a device, not exemplifying them in himself. O’Brien (O’Nolan) was definitely a crossover case, completely at ease in either language; he wrote and published in both (sometimes even translating himself) and he argued at various times for one or the other depending on the circumstances.
Well, my better judgement suggested I shouldn’t join this march after all–I’ve got way too much work stuff to get done in too little time. Plus, when I said earlier that I had a copy of @S2B that I picked up last time I was in Dublin, I was (it turns out) lying. It seems I picked up quite a few of O’Brien’s ouvres in lovely Erin, but @S2B is not one of them.
After having identified this deficiency in my library & finding that my local B&Ns have neglected to stock this essential book, I determined to attempt to acquire a copy on my trip to Boston & NYC this week.
(Curiously, I did not find the book in the several Harvard Sq. bookstores I perused, but rather had to venture further, to the BU bookstore, which not only had quite a few copies, but, after identifying myself as an alumnus, granted me a generous discount on my purchase.)
So it happened that, at the conclusion of my business in NYC, being thoroughly relieved & deeply desirous to relax while waiting out the rush hour traffic before catching a bus back to Boston, I availed myself of the ingress of the nearest Irish bar, where I ordered a Guiness, and cracked open the copy of @S2B I had expectantly packed in my shoulder bag. I was well through the first two pages before my Guiness was properly poured and settled. A few more Guinesses, some shepherds pie, a Jameson, and, later, a couple of flights and I’m almost caught up.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that maybe I will tag along with all you other deathmarchers this time, after all.