Dominic Fox wrote:
>Ongoing collection of variations here:
>
>http://www.dead-frog.com/aristocrats/
>
>Reminds me of Julia Kristeva's "Powers of Horror", particularly the
>sections on Celine. No, I'm serious...
>
>Dominic
>
>
Damn right you are, and I don't disagree a BIT. Every time I try to
read Journey to the End of Night something awful happens. What is
disconcerting to me is finding myself laughing at some versions that are
so ghastly that I might as well be in an historical time machine taking
me back to the execution of, say, Sir Anthony Babington at Smithfield in
1587. Allegedly, people back in Tudor England used to find public
executions for treason highly entertaining. That said, I'm still
laughing. This is the kind of joke that can take us out of our Oh The
Pity Of It sensibilities and send us into a really part of us that
grotesque. Is it a place of emotional honestry or darkness or both?
Oh, by the way. Gilbert Gottfried told this job at the Friar's Club in
New York four days after the destruction of the World Trade Center in
2001. I don't know if he consciously decided everyone needed to get
their heads elsewhere, needed a catharsis, but he told it anyway. The
people who weren't laughing their asses off and hating themselves were
leaving.
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman http://kenwolman.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------
"Poetry is tribal not material....this is where you can remember the good
times along with the worst; where you are not allowed to forget the worst,
else you cannot be healed."--C. D. Wright
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