Philadelphia Eagles 40, Green Bay Packers 33

 

Hurts hurts Love, and Love hurts.

Somebody should write a song.

Take 2:

Speaking of Sebastian Barry....

As detailed elsewhere, * I ran into Sebastian Barry by accident, but I admired his play Prayers of Sherkin enough to want MORE. My first MORE was one of his (to date) three poetry collections, 

1985

, Mountrath, Portlaoise, Ireland: Dolmen Press

, 67 p.

And I'm sorry to say that the poems I read there puzzled me. Sometimes baffled me. And often frustrated me. So even though it is a pretty slim book (51 text pages, a number of them only partially full), it took me over a week (and dozens of renewals from the Internet Archive, which only lets you check out books for an hour at a time--the literary equivalent of a whore hotel) to read. 

There were some lines which I found interesting or provocative or revelatory... 

"Our father in heaven, who stopped being my,

I have...done everything I could to unmoor myself...."

And every once in awhile a line (or some lines) would emerge clear and hard from the murk of seemingly (?) willful obfuscation:

"...we must readdress
in case all our letters are sent back
for insufficient postage and insolence."

And I'd be tempted to think, "Ah, he IS good; maybe I just haven't been concentrating hard enough...." And then it'd be back into the murk, and I'd lose my sense of hope for these poems again.

So I did what any self-respecting intellectual would do:

And I read a bit of it, but OoH is not the kind of book you sprint through, so I grabbed a couple of quick insights and then went back to The Rhetorical Town. 

And I pushed myself through the last pages, but it was still back and forth, a lot of stupid shit occasionally interrupted by a couple of good lines:

And when I finished it, I thought about the title of the book. What the hell is a rhetorical town? Is it a town which favors rhetoric? Is it a town which exists in order to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer? I thought about it for a few minutes... then decided it was a bullshit title either way.

Maybe I'm being too hard on my boy Sebastian, but based on what I've read so far (admittedly very little), I'd have to say that I found his prose far superior to his poetry. I'm going to try to give The Rhetorical Town another go, just to see what I can see, but to be honest, I'm not really enthusiastic about it. Most of the time I feel like Sebastian Barry is just trying to impress us with cheap magic tricks...all of which are trite and disappointing.

If you'd like to have a go at the book, you can check it out at Internet Archive for free, or you can purchase it for a mere $27.70 from Amazon, $26.81 from AbeBooks, $74.49 + $26.60 Shipping from Biblio (that's a signed copy, though)...well, you get the idea. It's pretty expensive for a 51 page book.

 

* Actually, just below this entry.

Prayers of Sherkin by Sebastian Barry

I've spent more than a few minutes thinking about Sherkin Island since I was there 8 1/2 years ago. I liked its smallness. Its separateness from The World. Its beauty.

Our arrival on Sherkin.

The Abbey

I didn't notice until years later that you could see The Baltimore Beacon in the background here.

The view of Sherkin from the Baltimore Pier on a choppy day.

And every once in awhile I try to find things related to the island and its history.

My first find was a song, "The Sherkin Island Ferry," by Roger Drawdy & the Firestarters. After I'd bought and listened to that song a few times I wondered if I could ever see Mr. Drawdy play live, Googled that and found out that he had a regular gig at Molly Malone's in Covington, Kentucky, a mere 95 miles from my front door (and most of it highway)...so of course I went up to see him. And during his break I was having a cigarette in the parking lot and Roger Himself came out for one as well, so I ambled over and talked to him about it all and mentioned that "Sherkin Island Ferry" was my favorite of his songs. When we went back inside after the break he launched into "Sherkin Island Ferry" and gave me a nod, so that was all quite nice.

And I found a few other Sherkin things after that, but most of them were either hard to lay hands on or pricey, so none of that, and it wasn't until yesterday morning that I happened upon Prayers of Sherkin by one Sebastian Barry, of whom I'd not previously heard.

I looked about and found some copies of the play, but on a whim had a look over at Internet Archive before laying down the dollars, and lo and behold...

So not just the play that I was looking for, but four others as well. Also, I liked the look of this collection. It reminded me of the Sam Shepard books I'd managed to collect...

And with good reason I realized as I fondled my Sam Shepards for this photo, because two of these were also published by Methuen. (For some reason the 2 volume was published by Faber & Faber. What's up with that? Was Methuen out of paper that year?)

And of course looking at my 3 collections of Sam Shepard made me think, "I should read those next!" But I'm going to try very hard to stick to one obsession at a time.

At any rate...I read Prayers of Sherkin and was quite happy with it. Mr. Barry is a strange dramatist, for sure. I don't know how this play could be staged, for instance, as it involved several trips from Sherkin Island to mainland Baltimore by rowboat, and also has scenes involving a candle maker's shop, a graveyard, and a general store. That seems a lot for a play that probably clocks in at (53 to 119 = 67 pages) slightly over an hour's running time. And of course there are many things you can do with the audience's imagination--just ask WS--but I don't think several people in a moving rowboat is one of them.But it has been staged, so what do I know?

At any rate, read it, liked it, plan on reading some more Sebastian Barry.

So I had a look to see what else he'd written to date (as he is still going), and our friends at Wikipedia gave me this rather impressive list:

Poetry *

The Water Colourist (Dolmen Press, 1983) ø
The Rhetorical Town (Dolmen Press, 1985) ∆
Fanny Hawke Goes to the Mainland Forever (Raven Arts Press, 1989) ø

*These books have two things in common: they are not readily available and they are very expensive...$100 to $200. 

Fiction

Mackers Garden (1982) ∆
The Engine of Owl-Light (1987) ∆
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) ∆
Annie Dunne (2002) ≈
A Long Long Way (2005) ≈
The Secret Scripture (2008) ≈
On Canaan's Side (2011) ≈
The Temporary Gentleman (2014) ≈
Days Without End (2016) ≈
A Thousand Moons (2020) ≈
Old God's Time (2023) ø...to be released March 21, 2023.

Plays

The Pentagonal Dream Under Snow (1986) ø...but a podcast of the play is available at https://podcasts.apple.com/mt/podcast/the-pentagonal-dream-under-snow-by-sebastian-barry/id794399080?i=1000545525525
Boss Grady's Boys (1988) ∆
Prayers of Sherkin (1990) ∆
White Woman Street (1992) ≈
The Only True History of Lizzie Finn (1995) ≈
The Steward of Christendom (1995) ≈
Our Lady of Sligo (1998) ∆
Hinterland (2002) ø...but cheap versions available online.
Whistling Psyche (2004) ∆
Fred and Jane (2004) ∆
The Pride of Parnell Street (2008) ø...but cheap versions available online. 

Dallas Sweetman (2008) ø...but cheap versions available online. 
Tales of Ballycumber (2009) ø...but cheap versions available online. 
Andersen's English (2010) ø...but cheap versions available online. 
On Blueberry Hill (2017) ø...but cheap versions available online. 

≈ Available at the Louisville Free Public Library.

∆ Avaiable at the Internet Archive.

ø So far as I can tell, no free version of these works is available.

So...with the exception of two poetry collections, it looks like The Complete Sebastian Barry could be mine with a fairly minimal investment...probably around $50 or less.

Hmmm.

Meanwhile, I have watched the movie version of The Secret Scripture (2016), but need to finish collecting my thoughts on it before writing anything extensive. (The Not Extensive Versison: Worth watching, but some Serious Plot Problems.) So I think my next goal is going to be to read the one poetry collection which I found available (The Rhetorical Town) and then get back to some plays.

Very exciting!

What's Needed to Make Heron's Books THE COMPLETE DICKENS Complete...aka The Missing Pieces

As of this moment, I'm reading my 14th of the 36 Volumes in this set, so the information contained hereafter may be updated as my reading progresses.

I've been working my way through Heron Books' THE CENTENNIAL EDITION of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS, and it didn't take long to notice that it was not complete. Some of the pieces that were left out were written completely by Dickens, others were things which he co-wrote with others...but in my opinion, COMPLETE means Complete. So here's what's missing.

1. "The Haunted House, Part 8: The Ghost in the Corner Room" (1859) by Charles Dickens

I HAD observed Mr. Governor growing fidgety as his turn—his “spell,” he called it—approached, and he now surprised us all, by rising with a serious countenance, and requesting permission to “come aft” and have speech with me, before he spun his yarn. His great popularity led to a gracious concession of this indulgence, and we went out together into the hall.

“Old shipmate,” said Mr. Governor to me; “ever since I have been aboard of this old hulk, I have been haunted, day and night.”

“By what, Jack?”

Mr. Governor, clapping his hand on my shoulder and keeping it there, said:

“By something in the likeness of a Woman.”

“Ah! Your old affliction. You’ll never get over that, Jack, if you live to be a hundred.”

“No, don’t talk so, because I am very serious. All night long, I have been haunted by one figure. All day, the same figure has so bewildered me in the kitchen, that I wonder I haven’t poisoned the whole ship’s company. Now, there’s no fancy here. Would you like to see the figure?”

“I should like to see it very much.”

“Then here it is!” said Jack. Thereupon, he presented my sister, who had stolen out quietly, after us.

“Oh, indeed?” said I. “Then, I suppose, Patty, my dear, I have no occasion to ask whether you have been haunted?”

“Constantly, Joe,” she replied.

The effect of our going back again, all three together, and of my presenting my sister as the Ghost from the Corner Room, and Jack as the Ghost from my Sister’s Room, was triumphant—the crowning hit of the night. Mr. Beaver was so particularly delighted, that he by-and-by declared “a very little would make him dance a hornpipe.” Mr. Governor immediately supplied the very little, by offering to make it a double hornpipe; and there ensued such toe-and-heeling, and buckle-covering, and double-shuffling, and heel-sliding, and execution of all sorts of slippery manoeuvres with vibratory legs, as none of us ever saw before, or will ever see again. When we had all laughed and applauded till we were faint, Starling, not to be outdone, favoured us with a more modern saltatory entertainment in the Lancashire clog manner—to the best of my belief, the longest dance ever performed: in which the sound of his feet became a Locomotive going through cuttings, tunnels, and open country, and became a vast number of other things we should never have suspected, unless he had kindly told us what they were.

It was resolved before we separated that night, that our three mouths’ period in the Haunted House should be wound up with the marriage of my sister and Mr. Governor. Belinda was nominated bridesmaid, and Starling was engaged for bridegroom’s man.

In a word, we lived our term out, most happily, and were never for a moment haunted by anything more disagreeable than our own imaginations and remembrances. My cousin’s wife, in her great love for her husband and in her gratitude to him for the change her love had wrought in her, had told us, through his lips, her own story; and I am sure there was not one of us who did not like her the better for it, and respect her the more.

So, at last, before the shortest month in the year was quite out, we all walked forth one morning to the church with the spire, as if nothing uncommon were going to happen; and there Jack and my sister were married, as sensibly as could be. It occurs to me to mention that I observed Belinda and Alfred Starling to be rather sentimental and low, on the occasion, and that they are since engaged to be married in the same church. I regard it as an excellent thing for both, and a kind of union very wholesome for the times in which we live. He wants a little poetry, and she wants a little prose, and the marriage of the two things is the happiest marriage I know for all mankind.

Finally, I derived this Christmas Greeting from the Haunted House, which I affectionately address with all my heart to all my readers:—Let us use the great virtue, Faith, but not abuse it; and let us put it to its best use, by having faith in the great Christmas book of the New Testament, and in one another.

2. "A Message From the Sea, Chapter III: The Club-Night" (1860) by Charles Dickens, Charles Collins, Harriet Parr, H. F. Chorley and Amelia B. Edwards

3. "Somebody's Luggage, Chapter III: His Umbrella" (1862) by Charles Dickens and ?