Friday, December 11, 2009

Respite

This blog will resume on January 4, 2010. It consists of ideas taken from books that are, for the most part, unfamiliar to the public that reads the New York Times's best sellers. RayS.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Spoon River Anthology (8).

Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Collier Books. A Division of Macmillan Publishers Co. 1915.


Why read it? Epitaphs in poetic form. Concise. Cryptic. Subtle. Often bitter. From the grave, the characters summarize their lives. Each poem is a potential short story.


“Wendell P. Boyd.” Read the Bible and interpreted it in an anti-religious manner. They locked him up as a loony and he was killed by a Catholic guard. He quotes the exact words of the Bible to prove his case. “My offense was this: / I said God lied to Adam, and destined him/ to lead the life of a fool, / Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good. / And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple / And saw through the lie, / God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking/ The fruit of immortal life.” p. 102.


“Francis Turner.” Victim of a heart problem, he yet died while experiencing the culminating experience in life—sex. p. 103.


“Franklin Jones.” Life is expectation. Fulfillment is usually frustrated. In the case of Franklin Jones, frustrated by death. If he had had another year of life, he could have completed his invention of the flying machine. p. 104.


“John M. Church.” As a lawyer, he does his job—brilliantly—for his clients, the owners and insurers of the mine that had collapsed. The widows’ and orphans’ claims were not allowed. Now that he has died, he must contend with rats and snakes—his just retribution for his earthly deeds. p. 105.


“Russian Sonia.” She did all that was wrong—mistress, lived with a man in Spoon River without being married—and was considered a success. She laughs at life. p. 106.


“Isa Nutter.” A man who devoted his life to securing the hand in marriage of Minnie in spite of many obstacles. He succeeded. An act of will. p. 107.


Petit, the Poet.” The poet laments that he didn’t see the web of life around him while living, which could have made him a great poet. Instead, he repeats his same narrow themes again and again, no matter what form he used. “Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,/ Ballades by the score with the same old thought: / The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; / And what is love but a rose that fades?” p. 109.


“Pauline Barrett.” Wife is a shell of herself after the surgeon’s knife. Can’t bear to have her husband keep up the charade of rapture in marriage. She is half-dead, and she feels she should be all dead, so she commits suicide and hopes that her husband understands. “One should be all dead when one is half-dead.” p. 110.


“Mrs. Charles Bliss.” A husband and wife who know they will be better off divorced, take the advice of the preacher and the judge to remain together because of the children. She points out that a loveless, cold marriage is no environment in which to rear children. p. 111.


“Mrs. George Reece.” Because she remembers and had memorized a line from Pope, she was able to endure in raising her children in spite of her husband’s unfairly being sent to prison—the scapegoat for Thomas Rhodes’s bank failure. “Act well your part, there all the honor lies.” p. 112.


To be continued.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Spoon River anthology (7)

Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Collier Books. A Division of Macmillan Publishers Co. 1915.


Why read it? Epitaphs in poetic form. Concise. Cryptic. Subtle. Often bitter. From the grave, the characters summarize their lives. Each poem is a potential short story.


Sexsmith the Dentist.” The reasons for “moral” actions are not really the idealistic reasons given—they are for the personal profit of someone else. “Why a moral truth is a hollow tooth/ Which must be propped with gold.” p. 90.


“A.D. Blood.” The mayor was a do-gooder who closed saloons and stopped the card playing. but his reputation has not stopped a young couple from using his grave site as a bed. p. 91.


“Robert Southey Burke.” He devoted his life to the do-gooder mayor, who, he now sees, was small-souled. Now, after a life time of this devoted service, he realizes that it was a wasted life. Warning—Do not ever devote your whole soul, existence and life to any one person. p. 92.


“William and Emily.” Love and death experienced together—“Together feel the sinking of the fire,/ And thus fade away together?—That is the power of the union of two souls. p. 95.


“The Circuit Judge.” The circuit judge reflects on his guilt. “Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,/ Not on the right of the matter.” “Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,/ Hanged by my sentence/ Was innocent in soul compared with me.” p. 96.


“Blind Jack.” Blind Jack, the fiddler, dies a violent death, caught in the wheel of a runaway carriage and its horses. Now, he and all fiddlers sit at the feet of Homer. p. 97.


“John Horace Burleson.” Would-be writer is early successful, but then he becomes a banker, always searching for the leisure to write his epic novel. He longs to have written one oft-quoted line of literature. Even that would keep his name alive as banking has not. p. 98.


“Nancy Knapp.” Her husband is accused of poisoning his father’s mind against his brothers and sisters and she and her husband inherit the money to buy their farm. They are ostracized. Bit by bit the farm crumbles to the final conflagration. One assumes that Nancy’s mind has gradually crumbled with the farm’s fortunes and with the ostracism. p. 99.


“Barry Holden.” Farmer with eight children and many worries hacks his pregnant wife to death when she begins again to talk about the mortgage. p. 100.


“State’s Attorney Fallas.” DA changes his attitude toward life after a doctor fumbles his boy’s head with a forceps when he is being born, making the child an idiot. From then on, he becomes charitable, no longer the legalistic justice-ridden prosecutor. p. 101.


To be continued.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Spoon River Anthology (6).

Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Collier Books. A Division of Macmillan Publishers Co. 1915.


Why read it? Epitaphs in poetic form. Concise. Cryptic. Subtle. Often bitter. From the grave, the characters summarize their lives. Each poem is a potential short story.


“Lucius Atherton.” The town Don Juan. Beatrice made Dante great. Lucius’s affairs brought him to the dregs of life. Love can ennoble or it can debase. p. 78.


“Homer Clapp.” Portrait of a loser or a fool. He respects the town whore and another man uses her. Shocked to find that this was so, Homer invests the money from his inheritance in a cannery hoping to gain the job as head accountant and loses it all. Only death makes a man equal to other men. p. 79.


“Deacon Taylor.” The deacon was a secret drunk. While the town thought he died eating watermelon, he actually died of cirrhosis of the liver. p. 80.


Cooney Potter.” A man who sacrifices everything—his own life, the lives of members of his family—to add an increasing number of acres to his own; dies an early death at 60. p. 82.


“Fiddler Jones.” Fiddling was all he wanted to do and so he fiddled. It was a good life. p. 83.


“Louise Smith.” Allowing an engagement for many years without marriage results in her fiancĂ©’s marrying someone else. Having had the engagement broken, she worries and frets to the degree that her love becomes hatred. Better that she let the broken love mature into a “beautiful sorrow.” p. 85.


“Herbert Marshall.” Browning’s elective affinities. Herbert dropped Louise, not because of wantonness, but because she was not his fulfillment. However, she is aware that he was her fulfillment. “This is life’s sorrow: / That one can be happy only where two are; / And that our hearts are drawn to stars/ Which want us not.” p. 86.


“George Gray.” The life of George Gray was a “boat longing for the sea, but afraid to put out to sea.” We must actively pursue life, not fear its chances and dangers. It is this active pursuit despite chances and dangers that gives meaning to life. “I have studied many times / The marble which was chiseled for me—/a boat with furled sail at rest in a harbor. / In truth, it pictures not my destination /But my life.” “It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.” p. 87.


“Hon. Henry Bennett.” January/May marriage. All of the wisdom and knowledge of the Hon. Henry Bennett are nothing to young Jenny who admires the brawn and physical strength of Willard. And now Jenny has the Hon. Bennett’s fortune and has married brawny Willard. p. 88.


Griffey the Cooper.” Life is like a tub holding us in. We need to go over the rim, to go beyond our own narrow view of the world. p. 89.


To be continued.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Spoon River Anthology (5).

Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Collier Books. A Division of Macmillan Publishers Co. 1915.


Why read it? Epitaphs in poetic form. Concise. Cryptic. Subtle. Often bitter. From the grave, the characters summarize their lives. Each poem is a potential short story.


“Jacob Goodpasture.” The old man who believed that the Civil War was the beginning of the end of freedom, and the death of his son in that conflict wasted. Now he understands that it was all worth it—he understands that he was a blind old owl. p. 68.


“Harold Arnett.” The despondency of the suicide. Of what use to rid oneself of the world when one may not escape the destiny of life? p. 69


“Margaret Fuller Slack.” Because she needed an outlet for her sexual drive, she married, had eight children, and had no time to write the novel she desired to write. Thus, sex is the cause for her failure to fulfill herself. “Hear me, ambitious souls,/ Sex is the curse of life.” p. 70.


“George Trimble.” Adopting first a liberal cause (free silver) and then a conservative cause (Prohibition), he is not believed by either liberal or conservative factions and goes nowhere politically. p. 71.


“Dr. Siegfried Iseman.” On becoming a doctor, his idealism to carry the Christian creed into medicine. Unfortunately, the result was poverty and his idealism turned to quackery as he bottles and sells the “elixir of life.” For which he is arrested. “And you find too late that being a doctor/ Is just a way of making a living.” p. 72.


“ ‘Ace’ Shaw.” Gambling with cards or any form of business is all chance. But gambling with cards is illegal. p. 73.


“Lois Spears.” Wife and mother, born blind, lives a happy, fulfilled life. p. 74.


“Justice Arnett.” The record of the judge’s life is in the leaves of the docket on a shelf above his head. Its metal rim gives him a death blow when it falls on his head. That docket with its leaves was his life and ends it. “Those are not leaves,’ Why, can’t you see they are days and days/ And the days and days of seventy years?” p. 75.


“Willard Fluke.” The townsmen all committed sin with Cleopatra and one by one they were taken in horrible fate. He alone seemed spared. But then the word came to him—“Confess your sin in public.” He was about to but he saw his little blind daughter in the first pew of the church. He couldn’t and death followed. p. 76.


Aner Clute.” Why did you become a prostitute? Because that is what people thought of me and expected of me. You are what is expected of you—thief or prostitute. p. 77.


To be continued.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Spoon River Anthology (4).

Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Collier Books. A Division of Macmillan Publishers Co. 1915.


Why read it? Epitaphs in poetic form. Concise. Cryptic. Subtle. Often bitter. From the grave, the characters summarize their lives. Each poem is a potential short story.


“Percy Bysshe Shelley.” With a poet’s name but neither a poet’s spirit or a poet’s expression, he is the antithesis of what his father wanted him to be. p. 57.


“Flossie Cabanis.” The would-be actress who left to try to be successful in New York, but who returned home a failure. The spirit that drove her to try to become an actress is still with her in her grave. p. 58.


“Julia Miller.” Carrying someone else’s child, she married an elderly man to try to hide it. Her last memory after arguing with her aged husband is the morphine and the words of the Good Book: “This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” p. 59.


“Johnnie Sayre.” Playing truant to ride the trains, he loses his leg—and his life—and feels terrible remorse for his disobedience to his father. His father is compassionate. The epitaph he has written for his son is, “Taken from the evil to come.” p. 60.


Zenas Witt.” Loser. Can’t do anything right. Marked for an early grave by fate or his own intention? He is there. p. 62.


“Theodore the Poet.” The poet wonders why the crawfish comes out of his burrow and about the souls of people—how they lived and for what. In short, the poet wonders about the mystery of life. p. 63. .


“The Town Marshal” …had killed a man when he had been a hard drinker before Prohibition which he had been recruited to police. When he is killed after striking a man with his loaded cane, he interceded in his dreams on behalf of his murderer with a juror who saved his murderer from hanging. “Fourteen years were enough for killing me.” Justice had been done. p. 64.


“Jack McGuire.” A political deal on behalf of a corrupt banker spares the life of the killer of the town marshal who accosted him when he had been drinking and had struck him with his “Prohibition” loaded cane. “I served my time and learned to read and write.” p. 65.


“Dorcas Gustine.” The town’s sharp-tongued fighter for personal justice gives a rationale for not keeping silent against all those who transgressed against her. “The tongue may be an unruly member-- / But silence poisons the soul./ Berate me who will—I am content.” p. 66.


“Nicholas Bindle.” The bitterness of the wealthy man who had been hounded incessantly to give. Notes the irony that the organ he had given to the church played for the first time at the service at which Banker Rhodes, who broke the bank and who ruined Bindle, worshipped, after Rhodes’s acquittal. p. 67.


To be continued.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Spoon River Anthology (3).

Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Collier Books. A Division of Macmillan Publishers Co. 1915.


Why read it? Epitaphs in poetic form. Concise. Cryptic. Subtle. Often bitter. From the grave, the characters summarize their lives. Each poem is a potential short story.


“Mrs. Meyers.” Wife’s point of view of the doctor is that he was sunk in sin to begin with and that his aid to Minerva Jones was just one more sin. Self-righteous woman. Puritan in her soul. p. 47.


“ ‘Butch’ Weldy.” Blown up, made blind by a fellow worker’s mistake—Judge rules he is entitled to no compensation. p. 48.


Knowlt Hoheimer.” Soldier killed in a foreign war doesn’t know why he died. Doesn’t know the meaning of the words “pro patria.” p. 49.


Lydia Puckett.” A woman is the real reason Knowlt Hoheimenr ran away to be a soldier. “Back of every soldier is a woman.” p. 50.


“Frank Drummer.” The village fool wasn’t. His mind deteriorated as he tried to learn everything by memorizing the Encyclopedia Britannica. The inarticulateness of one who tries to learn too much. p. 51.


“Hare Drummer.” Memories of autumns past and the gaiety of the young people. p. 52.


“Conrad Siever.” He is buried where it counts. He won’t be fertilizer for grass that no flocks will eat in the graveyard. He is buried under the apple tree that he had raised and pruned. He will help to make redder apples. p. 53.


“Doc Hill.” The doctor, estranged from his family, turns his energy and efforts to help the poor. He is pleased that they all turned out for his funeral. But he is touched by the tears of his mistress. p. 54.


“Andy the Night Watch.” The Night Watch remembers the nights when only he, his dog and Doc Hill were out. Now both are where no night watch is needed. p. 55.


“Sarah Brown.” Sarah’s love for both her husband and her lover helped her to peace, and today she rests in eternal peace. “There is no marriage in heaven/ But there is love.” p. 56.


To be continued.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Spoon River Anthology (2)

Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Collier Books. A Division of Macmillan Publishers Co. 1915.


Why read it? Epitaphs in poetic form. Concise. Cryptic. Subtle. Often bitter. From the grave, the characters summarize their lives. Each poem is a potential short story.


“Judge Somers”: In life successful, in death he appears to be less honored than the town drunk—the equality of death. p. 35.


“Benjamin Pantier.” Marriage. Lawyer, reduced to existence in his back room by his strong-willed wife with only his faithful dog for companionship. He and his dog are buried together. p. 37.


“Mrs. Benjamin Pantier.” Marriage. Wife’s point of view. She’s an aristocratic woman married to a man whose common ways she despises. p. 38.


“Reuben Pantier.” Experienced man of the world recalls why he became so and the faith of Emily Sparks which recalls him to the idealism of his youth when she was his teacher. p. 39.


Trainor the Druggist.” A druggist who mixes chemicals reflects on the human mixtures in marriage and notes that he died unbedded. p. 41.


“Daisy Fraser.” Town prostitute. Her fines contributed to the school fund. The town’s “Society for Social Purity” should have had to pay for their sins. At least Daisy was contributing to the pubic good. p. 42.


“Benjamin Fraser.” In crushing the lives of others, he destroyed his own appreciation of life. p. 43.


“Minerva Jones.” Ugly woman who was a poet. “I thirsted so for love!/ I hungered so for life!” p. 44.


“Indignation Jones.” Judged from his outside appearance, “Indignation” Jones was unkempt and coarse. In reality, he came from good Welsh stock, and was very sensitive. Bruised by life, by a slatternly wife, by the mistreatment of his daughter Minerva by those around her, he became what you saw him. He’s glad to be dead. p. 45.


“Doctor Meyers.” Tried to help Minerva Jones—abortion?—She died. He was indicted and all of the good life which he had built crumbled about him. “They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me,/ My wife perished of a broken heart/ And pneumonia finished me.” p. 46.


To be continued.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Spoon River Anthology (1).

Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Collier Books. A Division of Macmillan Publishers Co. 1915.


Why read it? Epitaphs in poetic form. Concise. Cryptic. Subtle. Often bitter. From the grave, the characters summarize their lives. Each poem is a potential short story.


“Hod Putt.” Two kinds of bankruptcy. One is legal. One is not. The bankrupt millionaire and the killer robber lie side by side. p. 25.


“Ollie McGee.” Marriage. The callous husband who ruined her joy and her looks. And now he regrets the loss of her good looks as he has lost his and she is avenged. p. 26.


“Fletcher McGee.” Marriage. The husband’s point of view. Control of her life. Manipulated his wife. The battle to control his wife’s soul. p. 27.


Robert Fulton Tanner.” Success. Life’s bait. Once in the cage nibbling the cheese of success, misery until Life is bored with watching him. p. 28.


“Cassius Hueffer.” The empty words of the epitaph–maker vs. the real epitaph of his life: “…he made warfare on life….” p. 29.


Serepta Mason.” People saw only the one side of her, the stunted side. “My flowering side you never saw.” p. 30.


“Amanda Barker” Marriage: bitterness at childbirth. Her husband knew she could not bring forth a child without giving up her own life! Henry’s apparent love was actually hatred. p. 31.


“Constance Hately”: Apparent benefactor poisoned her sacrifice by constantly reminding her dependents of their dependence on her. p. 32.


“Chase Henry”: In life, the town drunkard. In death, the equal of the respected town banker and his wife. p. 33.


“Henry Carey Goodhue”: The man who has fought injustice of every kind—gets his idealistic revenge—he helps to legislate prohibition, affecting every businessman whom he has fought and to whom he has lost. p. 34.


To be continued.