Another Reason to Love Absolute Martian Manhunter

Issue #6 (whoa-oh, we're halfway there!), page 10, panel 1...or maybe it's 2?:

Ring any bells? If not, here's page 1 of Thomas Pynchon"s Gravity's Rainbow:

Hey, man, this Deniz Camp guy is better than okay. And I love this book so much that I'm going to buy it again once it's collected...assuming it lasts long enough to be collected.

Addendum: I guess I meant to say TWO more reasons to love Absolute Martian Manhunter.  Here's #2:

The penultimate page of issue #6 looks like this:

But if you fold back the rest of the pages and hold this page up to the light, you get this:

And I'm going to have to look back at the previous five issues, because I think that this was done earlier on and I didn't catch it.

Addendum 2: I meant 3 reasons, of course. As I was flipping my copy of this comic book around to get that (👆) picture, I realized that all of the ads in this issue had been placed after the story, just like Image Comics has been doing. This is the way to print comic books. Nobody wants to see a death of Superman story interrupted by a Twinkies ad.

Stoned Thought #4,823

Urinals were invented to make it harder for boys to masturbate when they're not at home.

Absolute Martian Manhunter

I don't buy nearly as many comic books as I once did. The price (most are $4.99 an issue or more now) is part of it, but the biggest part is that most titles either don't catch my interest at all or don't hold it for long when they have caught it. Case in point: I was excited about DC'S new Absolute line. I picked up Absolute Batman #1, found it absurd but a little bit interesting, and have continued with the title to date, having just read issue #11. I don't think I'm going to last much longer, though. Other than the fact that this Bruce Wayne is mountainouly large and his Batmobile looks like one of those huge mining trucks, this is beginning to seem like the same old shit to me. Same old villians, too.

Same for Absolute Superman. I've stuck with it through #8, but that might be it for me. And I never even picked up Absolute Wonder Woman. Not because she's a woman, but because the art was so fucking ugly. (I might read it for free on hoopla, though. Speaking of which, a lot of these Absolute titles are available on hoopla. Nudge nudge.)

When the second wave of Absolute titles broke, I was excited again: Absolute Flash (by one of my favorite writers, Jeff Lemire), Absolute Green Lantern, and Absolute Martian Manhunter. I read the first two of these titles for a couple of months, then just didn't care anymore. Martian Manhunter, on the other hand...now THAT was something really different. In fact, it's kind of mindblowing in a way that comics haven't been for a very long time...maybe since Bill Sienkiewicz was pulling out the stops on The New Mutants. 

First off, the premise is pretty weird: John Jones isn't an alter-ego / disguise for the Martian Manhunter. John Jones is a regular human being, an FBI agent, who has been possessed by the Martian Manhunter. JJ doesn't seem to fully understand what's going on, though he is aware of the possession, and it's fucking up his mind quite seriously. It's also fucking up his perceptions, as we can see in this page from issue #3:

In that first panel, JJ is just walking across the lawn to get to his house, but there's all kinds of weird shit going on (in technicolor), and there's a very odd-looking Martian (Manhunter) looming over him. That continues in close-up in the second panel, then the third panel shifts to the observer's point of view, wherein JJ's wife watches him crossing the lawn in a very bizarre fashion, stepping high over what seems to her to be nothing at all...hence her puzzled expression in panel 4. Then we have the pullback in panel five, from JJ's point of view, and we wonder how the hell he is ever going to get into his house. That continues in the final panel, wherein his perception is that his house has levitated completely off of the ground.

And that's not even the strangest page of art. There's a constant influx of color and distortion, as if John is on an acid trip.

I love this book. It's only scheduled to last 12 issues (😡), and I have to admit that I'll be stunned if it makes it that far...but I'll be buying this one as long as DC keeps making it. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. 

Oh, look, a video!

AI-ing a Picture of Joe.

 

DDR: Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in 12 Fish by Richard Flanagan

I don't know for sure when I bought this book. But it's a hardback, and it was published in 2001, so I'm guessing that I bought it 24 years ago. There was a bookmark on page 38. I am at a loss to understand why I would have stopped there since I know I was enjoying the book immensely, but 2001 wasn't an easy year. I had gotten divorced from my first wife at the end of 1999 and started dating the woman who would soon become my second wife in the middle of 2000...plus 2001 was the year I left Ballard High School to teach at DuPont Manual, so things were a little tumultuous. Maybe the world just swamped me. At any rate, I'm here now.

404 pages. 404 beautiful pages. As I recall, the paperback version had black and white fish pictures at the chapter headings, and only black ink was used for the text. Let's check on that.

Yep. But check out the same pages from the hardback edition:

This isn't the best example, since the colors are rather muted, but the sea horse is brown, as is the text. And exactly of the subsequent chapters begins with a lovely picture of a fish, and then the text of that chapter is in a new color. Pretty cool, huh? And here's some good news: you can get a copy of that hardcover version for $6.09 (in Like New condition) from the lively folks at Thrift Books. That's $21.41 less than I paid for it 24 years ago.

But enough about me. Its time to Light This Candle!

Day 1 (DDRD 2,856), August 26, 2025

Read to page 40.

On page 2: "Perhaps as a poor Portuguese peasant girl sees the Madonna because she doesn't wish to see anything else, I too long to be blind to my own world." (2) Was that a reference to the little shepherd Lucia at the Fatima Marian appearance? Sure, sounds like it...and my daughter and I have read over a dozen books and watched a half-dozen movies on Fatima. No need to wonder, though, as half a page later we get this: "So maybe the new Fatima is somewhere in the vast wastelands of the Revesby Worker's Club...." (3)

So yes.

How's this for a premise: man finds a book entitled  Gould's Book of Fish. He reads it obsessively, but as he gets to end the pages become damp, then the book becomes a puddle of brackish water. The man becomes obsessed with "finding" it, is unsuccessful, and decides to rewrite the book. So Gould's Book of Fish is a book about a man writes a book called Gould's Book of Fish which is based on a book called Gould's Book of Fish.

That's my kind of book.

"Perhaps reading and writing books is one of the last defences human dignity has left, because in the end they remind us of what God once reminded us before He too evaporated in this age of relentless humiliations — that we are more than ourselves, that we have souls. And more, moreover. Or perhaps not." (28)

🐠

Day 2 (DDRD 2,857),  August 27, 2025

Read to page 76.

Strange thing. As previously noted, there was a bookmark at page 38. Yet this morning when I was reading, there was a description of an incident on page 42 that I remembered reading. 🤫

Page 47: a mention of "Billy Blake." Ahhhh. Im pretty sure I didn't get this far before, as I'd have remembered Mr. Blake.

Page 60: a mention of George Keats reference his scheme of "running a steamboat any tiny Kentucky hamlet." As it happens(-ed), George was the younger brother of poet John Keats. George ended up in Louisville, and there is a Keats Avenue in Clifton, where I used to live. Small 🌎,  ennit?

Just bumped into a short video clip of Richard Flanagan which was quite good:

https://youtu.be/UBxRJdFeApQ?si=Kskhk_3og6Vf966U

Found that on my way to finding a Complete Richard Flanagan Bibliohraphy:

Novels

Death of a River Guide (1994) LFPL 

The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997)

Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish (2001) LFPL 

The Unknown Terrorist (2006) LFPL 

Wanting (2008) LFPL 

The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) LFPL 

First Person (2017) LFPL 

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams (2020) LFPL 

Non-fiction

(1985) A Terrible Beauty: History of the Gordon River Country

(1990) The Rest of the World Is Watching: Tasmania and the Greens (co-editor)

(1991) Codename Iago: The Story of John Friedrich (co-writer)

(1991) "Parish-Fed Bastards": A History of the Politics of the Unemployed in Britain, 1884–1939

(2011) And What Do You Do, Mr Gable?

(2015) Notes on an Exodus

(2018) Seize the Fire: Three Speeches

(2021) Toxic: The Rotting Underbelly of the Tasmania Salmon Industry

(2023) Question 7 LFPL 

Films

(1998) The Sound of One Hand Clapping (director and screenwriter)

(2008) Australia (co-writer) LFPL 

So there's a respectable body of work, eh? And many of them (as noted) are available via LFPL. Just sayin', sir.

Hmmm...I'm enjoying these fish books So Much. What shall I read next?

Day 3 (DDRD 2,858),  August 28, 2025

Read to page 118.

Btw, in case you (like I) didn't know...

palliasse

noun

pal·​liasse pal-ˈyas 

: a thin straw mattress used as a pallet

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/palliasse

Day 4 (DDRD 2,859),  August 29, 2025

Read to page 155.

Day 5 (DDRD 2,860),  August 30, 2025

Read to page 185.

I'm not about to quit or anything...but the brilliant promise of this novel has faded to a tea candle in a very dark room. Not quite tedious...but headed in that direction. Still hoping 
for Miss Ankke-Strap Wedgie to Resurge.








Day 6 (DDRD 2,861), August 31, 2025

Read to page 215.









Day 7 (DDRD 2,862), September 1, 2025

Read to page 245.
"...it had, like all events of spiritual significance when degraded through intimacy & repetition, been reduced to the sadly diminished realm of art, even entertainment." (244)









Day 8 (DDRD 2,863), September 2, 2025

Read to page 275.

Day 9 (DDRD 2,864), September 3, 2025

Read to page 305.  Three days. 99 🍺 on the wall....

The discovery of the secret library has perked me up a bit, but honestly, I'm ready for this book to be over. The first chapter was great, but it's been downhill since then. Though I do still like the fish paintings. On the other hand, my need for more fish stories has definitely dissipated. I'm thinking it's time to get back to Jesus.

Day 10 (DDRD 2,865), September 4, 2025

Read to page 343.

Day 11 (DDRD 2,866), September 5, 2025

Read to page 373.

I was pretty sure that this book had a sewn binding, but I wasn't seeing any stitches. So I looked harder, and indeed, there are 6 stitches per set of pages. Well done. The quality of this book is exceptional. Unfortunately, the contents have proven to be unexceptional. Sad.

And with that in my mind, I decided that today was going to be it. Im going back in to finish this thing off.

And...

Nice little bit of Kafka allusion there (ꀉ).

Read to page 404, The End.  And, I am a bit sorry to say, the end of my Richard Flanagan readings as well. Not that he's a bad writer...but he just doesn't go deep enough for me. It's all about This Moment,  this image, this bit of scatology. And I'm too old to waste my time on that.

Countdown to XTC

196,086 more hits to make One Million on this blog!

I am actually  thinking that that 1,000,000 could happen before I die, which would make me happy. 

Or at least happier.

Message From the Twilight Zone

Found this picture on my phone. I didn't take it. I think the spirits are trying to contact me. ("Are they friendly spirits?" "Friendly?? Just listen.")

He said "fart." (Well, "farting," anyway.)

I've read 43 1/2 Isaac Asimov books in the last few years...and at least another dozen when I was a teenager. But this is the first time I've ever seen the word "farting" in one of his books. Not that that is a big deal. It isn't, of course. But Dr. Asimov is usually straining for a certain dignified mode of expression, so seeing this word burst out of the page tickled my fancy a mite. And aside from the anomaly thing, there's also the fact that there were other, gentler expressions for the auditory / olfactory manifestations of gastrointestinal distress which he could have strained for.

Just sayin', sir.

DDR: The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing by Thomas McGuane

 

I read Thomas McGuane's first novel, The Sporting Club, in 1975 or 6. It was assigned by one of my teachers at Catonsville Community College. I'm sorry to say that while I know I read it--I'm that kind of guy--I remember nothing about it, not even if I liked it or not. But when I saw a blurb for this book, it caught my eye. Strange, as I have no interest at all in fishing. It wasn't available at the library, though. So I just let it settle into the back of my mind until a few weeks ago when I placed an order for it through Thrift Books. 

xxii + 356 = 378 pages. And I'm going to finish this one, by gum.

Day 1 (DDRD 2,845), August 15, 2025

Read to page 28.

Only took to page xx (which is only the 6th page of text) before Izaak Walton was invoked. I like that in a (fisher)man.

"Constant discovery is the eternal joy of the ahistorical." (20)

Day 2 (DDRD 2,846), August 16, 2025

Read to page 58.

This actually isn't an easy read, as McGuane casually uses fishing words which are not definable contextually, but that doesn't bother me. In fact, I'm glad that he doesn't explain via context, parentheses, or footnotes. I get enough of it to get swept up in the story. And like Isaac Walton's book, it's about more than fishing. Although I have to admit that occasionally makes me wish I did that thing. No worries, though--I shake it off.

Day 3 (DDRD 2,847), August 17, 2025

Read to page 88.

This illustration 

appears on the title page of The Longest Silence. I thought that it might be taken from The Compleat Angler, but since there was no attribution & I had a Need To Know, I thought I'd put technology to work for me. I Did a Google Image Search with the picture and got this A.I. response:

"This image is a digitized plate from a book titled "Sport in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland" by Tom Speedy, published in 1886."

Clearly A.I. doesn't know that book titles are to be the italicized, not placed in quotation marks, but still I was impressed. Being rather skeptical by nature, however, I thought I'd have a look for that book.

And my old friend Internet Archive, had that book. But after searching through it and not finding the picture, I decided to run the search again.  This time I got a different result:

British Library digitised image from page 125 of "Rambles in East Anglia: or, Holiday excursions among the rivers and broads [With plates.]"

And this time the picture itself appeared with the attribution

...though I couldn't find an e-copy of the book itself.

A.I. also informed me that "The name of this picture is "Fish by Schaldach". It was created by William Schaldach in 1937. The image is also available as a digitized image from page 125 of "Rambles..." by the British Library." 

This doesn't seem to be completely accurate, either, however, as there is a book by William Schaldach called Fish by Schaldach which perhaps includes this picture, but is not the original source.

(If anybody out there happens to have a spare $906.50 hanging around…did I mention that it's my birthday Tuesday?)

From this little foray, I've learned 3 things: (1) technology is amazing (2) AI is quite fallible, and (3) there are quite a few books about what walking around the countryside and fishing, and all of the ones I've seen have very interesting illustrations. 

I'm particularly fond of this one:

And I imagine that this one--from the aforementioned Sport in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland by Tom Speedy--

-- is the reason A.I. initially misidentified the picture that I started all of this rambling about with. It is similar in layout.

Okay, enough. I have been in this rabbit hole for 2 hours now. Back to the serious business of reading my booky wook.

"I try to tie flies that will make me fish better, to fish more often, to dream of fish when I can't fish, to remind myself to do what I can to make the world more accommodating to fish, and, in short, to take further steps toward actually becoming a fish myself." (71)

Now THAT'S some dedication to 🐟ing that I can't even begin to imagine.

Day 4 (DDRD 2,848), August 18, 2025

Read to page 120.

Not for the first time I think, "You've got to know a lot to be a good fisherman." The types of lures. The habits of fish. And beind that, this McGuane fellow seems to know Nature back and forth: every bug, every tree, every flower. It doesn't make me long for The Wild...but it does make me appreciate its beauty. And that's a big stretch for me.

At this point I'm a little less than 1/3rd of the way through this book, but I have the feeling that this is "the center" of it:

"The more we fish, the the more weightlessly and quietly we move through a river and among its fish, and the more we resemble our own minds in the bliss of angling." (101)

McGuane's wit regularly surfaces with comments like this: "I once thought that the biggest things a steelheader or Atlantic salmon fishermen can have--not counting waders and a stipend--were a big arm and a room temperature IQ. Now I know better, having found out the hard way." (102)

I might need to read some more of this guy's books. Wait, what's that sound? Kind of like a drumming noise from several miles away? Oh...it's the complete McGuane Bibliography!

Fiction

The Sporting Club (1969, novel) LFPL, 1 copy

The Bushwacked Piano (1971, novel) 

Ninety-Two in the Shade (1973, novel) Movie @ LFPL, 1 copy

The Missouri Breaks (1976, screenplay, paperback original) Movie @ LFPL, 2copies 

Panama (1978, autobiographical novel) 

Nobody's Angel (1981, novel)

In the Crazies: Book and Portfolio (1984; ltd. ed. of 185)

Something to Be Desired (1985, novel) LFPL, 1copy remote shelving

To Skin a Cat (1986, short stories) LFPL, 1copy remote shelving

The Best American Short Stories (1986, story contribution, "Sportsmen") 

Keep the Change (1989, novel)

Nothing but Blue Skies (1992, novel)

The Cadence of Grass (2002, novel)

The Best American Short Stories (2004, story contribution, "Gallatin Canyon")

The Best American Short Stories (2005, story contribution, "Old Friends")

The Best American Short Stories (2006, story contribution, "Cowboy")

Gallatin Canyon (2006, short stories)

Driving on the Rim (2010, novel)

Crow Fair (2015, short stories)

The Best American Short Stories 2015 (2015, story contribution, "Motherlode")

Cloudbursts (2018, short stories)

Non-fiction

An Outside Chance (1981)

Best American Sports Writing, 1992 (1993)

Live Water (1996)

The Best American Essays (1997, essay contribution, "Twenty-fish Days")

The Best American Sports Writing (1997, essay contribution, "The Way Home")

Some Horses (1999)

The Longest Silence (2000)

Upstream: Fly Fishing in the American Northwest (1999)

Horses (2005)

The Best American Sports Writing (2005, essay contribution, "Seeing Snook")

The Best American Mystery Stories (2012, essay contribution, "The Good Samaritan")

The Best American Mystery Stories (2015, essay contribution, "Motherlode")

Screenplays

Rancho Deluxe (1975)

92 in the Shade (1975)

The Missouri Breaks (1976)

Tom Horn (1981)

Cold Feet (1989)

Partners (1993)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_McGuane

😙 

I don't eat fish very often, and when I do, it usually comes in little breaded squares, as I have a rule against eating anything that looks the way it did when it was alive, but this made me a little hungry:

"The fish in these ponds live on freshwater shrimp and their flesh is salmon pink on either side of their pearly backbones. The trout themselves are as surpassingly vivid as fine enamels,  and the few meals we make of them are sacraments." (110)

McGuane seems so completely dedicated to fishing that I find myself wondering how much it inhabits his other books...most of which seem to be Dry Landers. I find myself wanting to find out. 🤔 

Day 5 (DDRD 2,849), August 19, 2025

Read to page 140. Busy day. Lack of time, not lack of interest. 

Day 6 (DDRD 2,850), August 20, 2025

Read to page 184.

How's this for a vivid description of setting:

"Next to Key West Oxygen Service, in an ugly asphalt parking lot that rivals the La Brea tarpits* in midsummer, a bonefish skiff sits high on its trailer, bridging the imagination from the immediate downtown of Key West--both an outrageous honky-tonk and a memento of another century--to its gauzy, impossibly complex backcountry surrounds. When you're at the drive-in movie in Key West, watching adult fare with all the other sweaty neckers, the column of light from the projectionist's booth is feverish with tropical insects blurring the breasts and buttocks on their way to the screen. At low tide you smell the mangroves and exposed tidal flats nearby, and you're within a mile of sharks that could eat you like a jujube. Once the movie is over and you've hung the speaker back on its post and are driving home, palmetto bugs and land crabs pop under the tires." (157) 

* One of the children's books that I read with Jacqueline pointed out that "la" means "the," and "Brea" means "tar," so saying "the La Brea tarpits" is literally saying "the the tarpit tarpit." (Laughing Emoji)**

** For some reason I thought that writing "(Laughing Emoji")  was funnier than actually inserting a 🤣 . For the sake of complete transparency, I should probably add that I just turned 68 years old.

Speaking of funny, McGuane speaks disparaging about fishermen who are "chasing points, mounts, and records." (158) And he rarely eats his catches...with one luminous exception: he catches a fish so big it is a record for that particular species. He then has the fish prepared (decapitated, gutted, stuffed and cooked) and eats it. Most of the time? He hooks 'em, holds 'em, and then puts them back in the water. Kind of Zen, hunh?

Day 7 (DDRD 2,851), August 21, 2025

Read to page 221.

I'm amazed--and, to tell the truth,  a bit appalled--at how far McGuane travels in order to fish: Argentina, Russia.... And then, after spending hours...and sometimes DAYS catching nothing, he'll hook a fish, give it the once over, then set it free. It makes no sense to my little brain. But it seems to make him happy. Except when he doesn't catch any fish.

Hmm. On page 212 there's a reference to "my rosary," and on page 214 there's a reference to Mother Teresa. I think this McGuane feller is a Catholic! Also, I just discovered that my phone has an "emoji" for 📿. 

😎 

P.S. "McGuane was born in Wyandotte, Michigan, the son of Irish Catholic parents who moved to the Midwest from Massachusetts." 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_McGuane

Day 8 (DDRD 2,852), August 22, 2025

Read to page 254.

And the amount if time he devotes to fishing! McGuane talks about fishing from before sun up until sunset, about doing nothing but fishing for days at a time, even without making a single "catch." I cant imagine doing anything for that length of time...except reading. Or sleeping.  📚 😴 

Speaking of reading...I picked up these two times at the library yesterday:

Mmm-hmm.

And speaking of mmm-hmm, I just started reading the chapter entitled "Izaak Walton."

"From the Restoration until now, The Compleat Angler has been renewed by turmoil, none more conspicuous than the Industrial Revolution, which produced an explosion in the popularity of angling and an idealization of the pastoral life. Its cousins, Gilbert White's Natural History of Selbourne and Thoreau's Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, profited similarly. Armchair anglers and the various harried people of the western world have elevated these books to scripture." (229)

And furthermore,  "...the three...share a conviction that the elements of the natural world are Platonic shadows to be studied in search of eternity, a medium in which man was presumed to float as opposed to sink, as in the present when eternity has been replaced by the abyss." (230)

A long time ago I found an old and ripped up poetry journal and read a line from a poem which has stuck with me ever since:

"We are all underwater,
And the angels are fishing for our souls."

That might not be exact, but that's what has become lodged in my memory. I don't know the name of the poem. I don't know who wrote it. And I don't know where that old and dripped up poetry journal has gone.

BTW, here's (in part) what AI had to say about these lines of poetry:

"The quote echoes the sentiment of a fish seeking the ocean while already being in it, a metaphor used to highlight the importance of recognizing the value and meaning in the present moment, rather than constantly searching for something beyond what we already have. This perspective suggests that we might be so engrossed in the "underwater" experience of life that we fail to see the larger spiritual context or the divine assistance that is readily available to us. 

"Ultimately, the quote invites reflection on our connection to the divine, the challenges of earthly existence, and the ever-present possibility of spiritual growth and redemption."

Not fucking bad, AI! Maybe you SHOULD be in all of the schools.

(Tip of the hat to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.)

If any of you out there knows of or wrote this poem, please 📞 . So to speak.

This is what made me think of that poem: "The angler who understands such things may betake himself to steepletops and, with his rod and line, angle for swallows." (232-233)

That'd make for a cool painting. And Hey didn't Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse do this (except with bats) in The Bojeffries Saga? I have a copy somewhere, but I don't have the energy for an archaeological dig right now.

I ran up to Locust Grove to check out their book sale. It was super crowded,  which is extremely off-putting for me,but they have such amazingly good stuff that I hung in there long enough to buy three books:

What I didn't buy...because it cost $200...was this beauty:

Yep. A two volume edition of The Complete Angler (sic) published in 1880. Holy shit!

"An important part of life, maybe the most important part, is the quest by each of us to discover something we believe to be more worthy and permanent than we are individually." (252)

Day 9 (DDRD 2,853), August 23, 2025

Read to page 284. 

"...when I was fishing two hundred days a year...." (266)

😲 

In today's reading, there was a long section entitled "Unfounded Opinions, Rants, and Miscellany" (pages 261 to 277). Or maybe it's just seemed long. It had a few moments,  for sure, but is also included all list of and commentary upon many of McGuane's fishing rods. 😴 Maybe a fisherman would find this interesting, but I, sir, am no fisherman. If you're not, too, itd probably be best* to skip this section.

Man...I really wanted that 1880 The Complete* Angler. ***

* Hi, Melania. 

** Again, Sic.

*** I told my son that if I'd been 40, I would have bought it, but at 68 there just aren't enough years left to enjoy it $200's worth. 😶

Day 10 (DDRD 2,854), August 24, 2025

Read to page 317. And with that...I'll probably be finishing this book tomorrow. And oddly enough, I feel like reading more 🐠 books. I'm thinking either Gould's Book of Fish--which I've Been Meaning to Read for a few decades now--or one of my Crunch and FD's collections...or maybe even a re-read if The Compleat Angler. Speaking of that last one, I was back at the Locusts Grove Book Sale again today--because my daughter wanted to go, not for me--and that 1880 Angler was marked down to $100. Oh. I fondled it. I strokes the cover passionately. Then I put it back, wiped away some tears, and paid for my daughter's five books. 🙄

Day 11 (DDRD 2,855), August 25, 2025

Read to page 340. Just a brief pause for reflection, then I'm going to read the last 16 pages.

McGuane writes with great wit and wisdom. He also throws some humor into the mix. I don't give even a gram of shit about fishing...and I didn't understand many of the terms employed here...and yet I really loved this book. I'm tempted to just pick up another McGuane book when I finish this one...and I just happen have a book of his short stories I picked up from the library...but I'm also thinking about continuing on the 🐟 journey. Dunno why.

Meanwhile...

This last section is pretty interesting. McGuane writes to a bunch of his fishing buddies to ask them how they feel about fishing as they've gotten older. Some of the buddies are pretty famous people like Dave Grusin, Huey Lewis, Tom Brokaw, and Jimmy Buffet. Interesting. 

To page 356, The End.

DDR: Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Barbara Thiering

I seem to have deleted my Introduction for this. Short version: I came back to this book because I was interested in it and saw there was no way that I would finish before the due date (August 30--no more renewals). So I've got to keep up a good pace. 371 pages to go, 16 days to do it. I think I can, I think I can....

Day 1 (DDRD 2,844), August 14, 2025

Read to page 80...

"Mary, Joseph and Jesus were real people, members of a religious movement with high ideals and strict practices. They lived out a real human life in interaction with it and with its historical development. If they have become images of religion, unreal people owing more to human imagination than to reality, it is not an unknown process in human affairs. For some, the images meet a need, and it would be hurtful to question them; for others, it is a stage of growth to go beyond images to the actuality." (48 - 49)

This is mind blowing:

According to Thiering, the Gospels are essentially written in code, so that those who need a facile legend can read about Jesus being immaculately conceived and born in a manger in Bethlehem...while those with knowledge understand that Jesus was sired by Joseph and that the family was part of the Essene group...etc. I find it interesting that there are inconsistencies in the Gospels which are resolved by this bifurcated view. For instance, what sense does it make to have the genealogy from David through Joseph (Matthew 1: 1-16; Luke 3:23-38) if Joseph is not Jesus's actual father? (The answer, by the way, is none.) It seems to me that this is a path which people frustrated with the "unbelievable" aspects of the story of Jesus could take.

I took a brief pause in my reading to Google around, and happened upon Barbara Thiering: A short critique by Dr Jonathan Sarfati (https://creation.com/barbara-thiering-a-short-critique). It was short...and scathing. "Outlandish" and with "no support" were two of the nicer things he had to say about her. I must confess that I felt my heart sink. Then I checked in Dr. Safir's Curriculum Vitae. He's a fervent Creationist who (obviously) denies the "theory" of evolution. My heart bobbed up to the surface again. Fuck this guy. 

Which doesn't mean that I've accepted Thiering's hypothesis. I find it interesting, though, and want to hear more about it. I'm also thinking about how two things that I accept as irrefutably true--that Edward de Vere write the works known to us as Shakespeare's and that 9/11 was an inside job--are regularly ridiculed and largely regarded as Outlandish and With No Support. 

Digression: off the top of my head, here are elements of the New Testament story of Jesus that I find problematic.

The genealogy which appears in Matthew and Luke, both of which purport to show Jesus as a descendent of David...through Joseph.

The story about the family going to Bethlehem for a census, which (1) there is no record of in history and (2) makes no sense, as a census would not be of any use if everyone went back to the father's place of birth.

The huge gaps in Jesus's biography...from shortly after his birth until age 12, and from age 12 until age 30.

Jesus sending Region's demons into the pigs, who then drown themselves. (1) Why are theirs in Jewish lands? (2) Why dud the pigs Crown themselves? (3) Why did Jesus let them drown themselves? (4) Why put the innocent pig owners out of business?

Some other parables are problematic, too...like the servant who buried his master's money to keep it safe and was punished for it.

The pivot from applauding Jesus to demanding that He be crucified.

The freeing of Barrabas, which was not a "tradition" at all.

The description of Pontius Pilate as a reasonable Roman, when in fact he was a rabid son if a bitch.

The arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane--as if the Romans didn't know where Jesus was without Judas's kiss to guide them.

There's probably more, but those are the first ones that occur to me.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Day 2 (DDRD 2,845), August 15, 2025

Read to page 84 when it hit me: this is just bullshit, man. It's interesting bullshit, for sure, but Thiering continues to state things as true with no evidence whatsoever. It reminds me of when AI was reading Aquinas and Augustine: it was all built on a structure of self-referential axiom. So I hate to say it, but I'm out. I have limited reading time left to me in this life, and I'm not going to waste any of it if I can help it.

DDR: The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs

 

 

So...despite my lack of enthusiasm for Naked Lunch...which I found to be a complete waste of my time...(watch the movie instead; it's brilliant and has very little to do with the book)...I seem to have decided to continue my Burroughs Odyssey. Or maybe it's my Burroughs Iliad...sometimes it's hard to tell.

I have a nice paperback omnibus of The Nova Trilogy

of which The Soft Machine is the first third...

...but the library had an e-version of The Restored Text, so I thought I'd go with that. (Thus far all of my WSB readings have been of the Restored Variety I am a little suspicious of this  nomenclature, as in previous volumes the "restoration" seems to consist of throwing in appendices and material which had been omitted previously--none of which has seemed particularly useful or noteworthy--but nevertheless I persist, Ted.

This Restored Version has 101 pages of text, approximately 100 pages of Introduction, Notes, and Deleted Scenes. 

But before we commence with the action, check this out:

First edition:

£300.09 ($404.99) seems pretty cheap for this book. Maybe because of the lack of the original dustwrapper? I mean, check this out:

Gotta admit that if $10,000 were like $10 to me, I'd go for it. (Besides, did you see the Free Shipping???)

P.S. I jyst noticed that this wasn't the trilogy I was thinking of. Maybe the inclusion of a first edition of (The) Naked Lunch is responsible for the big price tag here.

Here's the beginning of cuts up (from the Introduction by Oliver Harris:

BTW, "Gysin" is 

Brion Gysin (19 January 1916 – 13 July 1986) was a British-Canadian painter, writer, sound poet, performance artist and inventor of experimental devices.

He is best known for his use of the cut-up technique, alongside his close friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs. With the engineer Ian Sommerville he also invented the Dreamachine, a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed. It was in painting and drawing, however, that Gysin devoted his greatest efforts, creating calligraphic works inspired by cursive Japanese "grass" script and Arabic script. Burroughs later stated that "Brion Gysin was the only man I ever respected."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brion_Gysin

Day 1 (DDRD 2,842), August 13, 2025*

Read to page 41 (of 218). Though the page count is misleading, as with all e-books, I suppose. According to Amazon, the paperback version of this version of the book is 336 pages long. So I'll use the e-numbers for daily bookkeeping, but I'm claiming 336 for the whole shebang. 

This book has the strangest publishing history I've ever heard of. After the first (1961) edition, Burroughs chopped out half of the text (which was only 38,000 words long) and wrote new material so that the second edition (1966) was the same length. There was also another version in between these two, which I don't think was ever printed, and then another published version in 1968 which added 19,000 words to the text. So there are at least three...and more probably four...versions of The Soft Machine. So in this case, Restored Text is a bit of a misnomer, as there was literally no way to reconcile these different versions of the book. Overall, it seems that the direction (or at least the vector) was to reduce the amount if actual cuts up material. Sheesh. And then, of course, this Restored Text is a 4th version....

* Check it out: we're back in perfect sequential order!

P.S. I just reread the first chapter in my omnibus edition, and it seemed to be the same that I read in the Restored Text. Hmmm.

P.P.S. Burroughs like the phrase "a spot of bother." It keeps popping up. As does Walgreen's.

P.P.P.S. Read the second chapter, "Who Am I to Be Critical?" in my omnibus edition (pages 13 to 25), then immediately after read it in the Restored Text e-book edition (pages 42 to 51). Seemed the same to me except that the Restoredexist.    version started in what was the first chapter (page 11) in the omnibus. Very strange.

Also...I am by no means anything less than liberal, especially with respect to free speech and anti-censorship, but I have to say that this book is straight up pornography. Even at this early point (page 25 or 51, as you please) there have been dozens of descriptions of anal sex, masturbation, and ejaculations...the latter often accompanied by grotesque violence (hangings, gang rapes, torture). I'm going to try to stick with this book until the end, but I'm already asking myself "Why does this book even exist?"

P.P.P.P.S. Read "Public Agent" chapter x 2: pages 52 to 55 in e-version, 27 to 31 omnibus version. Pretty sure these texts were identical.

Day 2 (DDRD 2,843), August 14, 2025

Read to page 63.

"According to The New York Times, [William S. Burroughs'] literary rights — especially to Naked Lunch, Junky, and The Soft Machine — generate approximately $200,000 annually." (https://www.finance-monthly.com/how-much-was-william-s-burroughs-worth-when-he-died-the-numbers-might-surprise-you/#google_vignette)

So that's pretty impressive for a guy whose work is...shall we say challenging and relatively obscure?

Day 3 (DDRD 2,844), August 15, 2025

Read to page 70...and I'm out. Out of this book, out of William S. Burroughs. This is just unrelenting vulgar nonsense. Junky and Queer were at least a little bit interesting, and The Yage Letters had its moments, but Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine are just bullshit. It bothers me a bit to know that Burroughs spent so much time with this manuscript...which would seem to indicate that he was serious about it...but I see no redeeming value in this whatsoever, and I feel that I'm just wasting time when I could be reading something worthwhile...or at least entertaining. This is just meaningless graphic sex and cruelty.

Back to Jesus, I think.