Rurritable Reads

a little touch Thomas Hart Benton

"Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness. " melville

Many good things have come from my political interest in the 2008 Presidential Election. My friends, clients- all know my political leanings- heading left, fast progressing to Progressive. They don't agree- All- but we still get along very well.

a new sheriff in town

Well, I met the best people in the county while campaigning for our now President. I am happy to know he is there, making things better.

but, about BOOKS.

I asked one of these fellow politicos of the South to weigh in on his book picks. This is no light book tete a tete. He writes the blog Rurritable-

Derek
aka rurritable

in his own words:

"He is a farmer, artist and layabout. He cooks, cleans and drinks. He understands and speaks the poultry languages. He vows never to use the third person when referring to himself again."

"I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts." J McG

"Fred"

Are we the only two Personians writing a blog? Doubt it very seriously-but I would prefer to think we have the high minded side covered.


The Rurritable is a quite brilliant man- I know this because he married a brilliant woman. They have an enviable farm, beaucoup farm animals and eat beautiful food. They are vegetarians- He cooks, I DID say she was Brilliant,Well, she's smart too!

dreamin' bout cookin'
-this in no way resembles the rurritable or the rurritable's wife

Rurritable writes with an irreverence I envy; he paints, observing today's sensibility-authentic looking maritime paintings. He farms as the ancients did- or as close to it as anyone I hope to know.

what are you reading now?


It's been so long since I've read anything but a service manual for old horse-drawn equipment or a book telling you how to think like a mule, that It took me awhile to answer those questions.


We subscribe to Granta, and I generally read all of the nonfiction offerings, despite the black depressions they can trigger. Occasionally there's a piece of fiction I actually like, or can at least wade through, but it strikes me there are far fewer gifted young writers than there were in the eighties. I'm sure a bunch will cycle through again, and it's just a little dry spell. Harper's was consistently good through the Bush years, and I seem to have found better fiction there than in Granta.

what book do you read that you never tire of?

"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." melville





The one book I've probably read through more times than I can count is Moby Dick. Typee is also brilliant, but just doesn't happen to contain that hypnotic, Godlike voice. Melville is the only author who makes me miss the subtle elaborative sentence structure of the Victorians. I regard him as the most technically gifted writer until the appearance of Joyce, and then it's neck and neck. I think about Joyce when I write drunk, or write about politics. Ulysses for the drunk, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for the arch, grievance centered partisan argument. When I write about politics while drunk, it's the cyclops episode of Ulysses that naturally springs to mind.

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it." melville

Joyce (by C.Ruf)

recommend some noteworthy books:

I always liked John McGahern, but aside from his later works and The Pornographer, his humor, if he employed it at all, eluded me. I should try again now that I have sightly better reading skills.


Nabakov. Only he could have pulled that stuff off without roundly being derided as a pompous egomaniac. Pnin and Pale Fire. When he writes about the weak and the frail no one is better.


Aleksander Hemon deserved every penny of his MacArthur genius grant, and everything I've managed to acquire and read is astonishing. Especially "The Question of Bruno".
Which reminds me, Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser.


And Hilary Mantel is at the same time one of the best prose stylists at the opening of this century, and the finest horror writer ever to have drawn a breath.

Southern Gothic on scratchboard

There are more..
Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Taylor...

...one can guess the list never ends.

"Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air." Melville

painted delft tiles

all art and photographs by rurritable