Loathing Lawrence

Soon - next week, hopefully - I will be done with DH Lawrence and his pontificating about the ills of turn of the 20th century modernism.  Three tedious novels later, I offer this summary: 

Sons & Lovers:  464 pages of Oedipal Complex (supposedly, he was drawing on his own life, not Freud)

Rating:  4 out of 10:  The characters in the book are so lame, fatalist, and inconclusive in their thoughts that I felt like tossing the book out the window (which I did with a  book of similar lameness:  Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Too bad, because The Mayor Of Casterbridge was amazing) 

The Rainbow: 502 pages of how people confuse sex with marriage and love.  The second half of the book is devoted to protagonist, Ursula, who has epiphanies every other day - none of which have any lasting impact until she miscarries at the end of the novel. In no other novel have I seen the word hate used so frequently. It appears that there are two emotional states for Lawrence: hate and everything else..except sex.

Rating: 5 out of 10: (largely because  I really liked the character depth of Tom Brangwen).  The prose is schizophrenic; the narrated internal monologue is beyond annoying; the level of indecision of all the characters throughout the novel is maddening. Worst of all, one has to read the follow-on novel Women in Love to understand what The Rainbow was supposed to be about...other than one woman's rejection of God's Covenant in the Old Testament.  Please, create a new myth already....

Women in Love: reading it now. People certainly fall in love easily in this novel...but the question is what is love in the precarious paranoia of DH Lawrence's pen? 

Rating: 7 out of 10 largely because Lawrence finally stops being an experience-vampire and lets the characters' interactions speak for themselves.  The women are particularly annoying.  At least the relationship between the two male protagonists is interesting...so far.What is completely annoying is Lawrence the author trying to impress the reading public with his philosophy prowess, by putting his ideas into the mouths of his characters. Really, I don't care if you don't like the metaphysical philosophers, that you think Nietzsche had it right, and that you and Bertam Russell had a falling out. I like my philosophy in fiction to be delivered with more subtlety that via weighty dialogues that sound like a meeting of the minds in a coffee shop. 

My tribe

     I would work stapling papers at the The Definitive Source for English Language (and way cool reference dictionaries), The Oxford English Diction (OED), if they would have me.  As you will see here the people there understand the frustration of a future Lit and Grammar instructor.
     Perhaps my affinity for the OED is one rooted in kindred spirit? One of the major contributors of the OED when it was being compiled, was a nut case in an asylum, who felt that Irish men were tunneling under his floor boards.

     I don't think Irish men are tunneling under my floorboards, largely because I've been in my basement and have inspected. One can never be sure. (I did have small Taiwanese men with spears trying to get out of my stomach in 2009. It was pretty awful. They haven't returned. Thankfully.)

Mind the list, and avoid the wrath

The following is an incipient list of words / phrases that must not be used in my presence: 

agency (and I don't mean the insurance agency kind) 

privileged

post-colonial

Hegelian Dialectic (dialectic is fine) 

social justice

Other annoyance include making verbs out of nouns.  This MUST stop: 

consequent

liaiase 

monetize / dollarize 

The Last To Know About...

I was the last to know about World Nuttella Day. 

Now I realize that I was the last to know about Pop-Tart World. 

From the looks of it, it was merchandising overkill, in a dimly lit space (to add a sort of disorienting fun-house mystique).  I would have been aggravated with the amount of screaming children, and over-priced t-shirts.  I would have been really aggravated at the absence of Milton The Toaster. 

 Not that Milton.....

....this one: 

oh my gawd. wickid big stawm

Lord Creamhorn was stuck in this storm. I'll let him tell the story about the snow coffin he made on the front lawn of my Uncle Vito & Aunt Francesca's home.

click for entire story

I was home shoveling out Mrs Starhursky at the end of the street. Come to think of it, I was at Bishop Feehan High School and they closed early.  I also remember walking from the end of Read Street to Mawney Street before my mother came and got me with the car. Sure it's only 0.4 miles, but I was in a school uniform that did not allow for pants. 


And on the subject of Pants, I'm looking for more Pants N'at episodes as well as the N'at Man episodes. 

Pants N'Nat

Man, I remember when I first heard the Pittsburgh accent.  This is a clip from the local radio station.  If anyone finds recordings of An'Nat Man, I'd appreciate it.

Yins gunna watchiss?   (translation: click here to watch) 

Become a Pastafarian

I did, in 2009. Now you should.  Click here for the free PDF explaining Pastafarianism and His Noodly Appendage. 

As a Pastafarian, you can record and upload miraculous sighting of HNA, and help the non-believers to believe. You also get exclusive info that will make your presence on the planet meaningful.  Here is an example: 

Here is your link LINK to get you started.