I am late this month. Not because my enthusiasm for the task has waned--on the contrary my appetite for somehow insinuating my way into some corner of the discourse by any possible means has perhaps never been greater--but time, distractions. I cannot linger for five or ten minutes to find the just phrase. I have at this moment a team of electricians in my house that my wife has called in. It never begins.
A List: Kitto--Form and Meaning in Drama..............................................276/337
B List: Between books--I am 2 reports behind on this list as well, but the next book on the list is a really long one, the first really since Bleak House which we hit about a year ago, so I will have time to catch up.
C List: Stanley Gordon West--Amos............................................................66/231
Kitto has finished the Greeks and moved on to Hamlet now. He's not insufferable in the way so many modern academics are, but he is overly fond of his own erudition and thought processes, which are not that spectacular. He employs a lot of words to convey what seem to me a few fairly intuitive points that would benefit more by being expressed with a sharper and more focused clarity than given the full academic treatment. That's my impression, anyway. I don't know whether this book is read much anymore anyway.
Stanley Gordon West was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1932, and attended Macalester College, a well-regarded liberal arts school in that part of the country for those of you in the east who may not realize that, and the University of Minnesota, from which he graduated in 1955. He moved to Montana in 1964 with his family--his obituary lists 5 daughters, though the dedication in his book, which was published in 1983, only names 4 of them and indicates that they were already grown. He seems to have lived in Montana for many years, and many of his books, including Amos, have something of a Western theme, though at the time of his death in 2015 he was back living in Minnesota again. I note these biographical details because so much in it is typical of the men of that generation, the big families, the educational attainments, the writing fetish, the comparatively non flashy, dyed in the wool Americanness. This guy only died a few years ago, and his book (this one) was published when I was in 7th or 8th grade, yet his life and career and overall outlook seem to belong to another world. This book is set in a county nursing home in Montana for people, mostly old men, who have no family or other worldly ties, a type of person which I understand is quite common in that part of the world. The staff at this home abuses the patients, manipulates them into signing over to them such monies as they receive and so on. It is supposed to have been set in the 60s, but some aspects of the world in it are recognizable to me from my childhood, especially the radio and other old media. The story has some similarities to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, another product of that generation. I don't know how well the book sold but it was made into a made for TV movie on CBS in 1985 starring Kirk Douglas, the late, great Elizabeth Montgomery, Dorothy McGuire (!), Ray Ralston and Pat Morita. Another blast from the pre-90s past there. I am reading this because it won one of my less-contested Challenges, and it is something of a respite after months of Carlyle (which I did like--otherwise I would have given it up, I can do that on the C-list).
This month's pictures, which are not numerous. are mostly from February. March is pretty much the ugliest month of the year here, but we'll get those pictures next month. Here the fallen birch tree (which miraculously fell without harming the basketball hoop) serves as a platform for my 11 year old to practice dunking, though he would be better off practicing shooting.
These are the grounds of a former estate in Methuen, Massachusetts that has been turned into a public park. I am not sure why the house was pulled down, but only ruins remain. I went down here with 3 of my children on one of the days of my vacation. I did not go to Florida this year (or New York)
This tower is part of the estate that managed to escape destruction. We were in this neighborhood because one of my sons had a longstanding desire to go to Outback Steak House, and the nearest one to us was here. It is just over the border from New Hampshire. I could have parked in New Hampshire and walked to this place if I had wanted.
We had a spaghetti dinner at which others actually did join me.
This is just 10 days ago. The amount of snow has already diminished considerably since then.
Icicle formation outside of the best used book shop in my area.
Another view of the front of the shop.
Back to Methuen. This is all that remains of the former mansion. Apparently people have weddings here though it is really a pretty humble ruin.
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