Several people have recently inquired about the status of the forthcoming Adam Smith volume. Here are the finalized details.
A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 62
The grandeur of my physique, the complexity of my worldview, the decency and taste implicit in my carriage, the grace with which I function in the mire of today’s world — all of these at once confuse and astound Clyde. Now he has relegated me to working in the French Quarter, an area which houses every vice that man has ever conceived in his wildest aberrations, including, I would imagine, several modern variants made possible through the wonders of science.
Clearly an area like the French Quarter is not the proper environment for a clean-living, chaste, prudent, and impressionable Working Boy.
I am apparently trapped in a limbo of lost souls. However, the simple fact that they have been resounding failures in our century does give them a certain spiritual quality (p. 195).
Walker Percy’s “Lost in the Cosmos”
On the eve of the Walker Percy Weekend here is Chris Turner-Neal assessing one of WP’s later works that will be discussed on one of the WPW panels. Here also is Adam Frank on Lost in the Cosmos.
Percy’s progress
Bill Binnings has nearly finished the textured clay statue of his friend Walker Percy.
I remember one man who hitchhiked all the way from California to meet Walker
The Columbia and RCA Victor Live Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars
Bone marrow
Diamond Dogs @ 40
One of the more thoughtful assessments of an album that met with almost universal derision in 1974 both in terms of the presentation (pipping the Stones’ Guy Peellaert cover for “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll” to the post) and the “raw” sound. Though I concede it’s not one of Bowie’s best, Diamond Dogs retains a powerful allure that his other 70s albums somehow don’t engender. Few, if any, DB aficionados will know that DB was cited in a chum’s academic review.
Walker Percy — born on this day
IMHO the greatest post-war writer in English and no slouch at philosophy either, each uniquely fused together. Without any doubt I’d put him up there with Kafka, Mann and Musil. The best (most elegant and most informed) biography of Percy is by the very excellent Patrick Samway, S. J. Samway also by the way was the most meticulous of editors for Percy’s Signposts in a Strange Land: Essays.
A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 61
Lana studied Jones’ face, but his eyes were invisible behind the smoke and dark glasses.
“The only thing you ever be givin the orphan is siphlus. Whoa! Do gimme no shit about no mutherfuckin record player. As soon as I crack open this orphan case, I calling a po-lice myself. I sick and tire of working in this cathouse below the minimal wage and getting intimidatia all the time.”
“Hey! Then they is somethin crooker with the orphans. Whoa! I knowed it all along. Well, if ever you plannin to call up a po-lice about me, I plannin to call up a po-lice about you. Phones at po-lice headquarters really be hummin. Ooo-we. Now lemme in peace with my sweepin and moppin. Recor playin pretty advance for color peoples. I probably break your machine” (p. 188).
Classic Zappa Interview
Zappa ever honest, insightful and articulate makes the interviewer somewhat uncomfortable. One rarely hears Zappa on radio — an appalling neglect but then Zappa doesn’t meet the corporatized taste that still prevails, not to mention that he of course is so-called “political correctness'” bete noir.
