February 2, 2010
The Boring Class
In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying the matriarch of a sod dirt Mississippi family succumbs to illness, and the father presumes to take the body, and family, to her hometown of Jefferson for burial. The journey is a tragedy of poor decisions and hubris, and the story takes on sysiphean dimensions, a parable of inexorability and inertia.
The style is multiple narratives, a tale told in turn mostly by the offspring: the rock-ribbed Cash, the impestuous Jewel, the extrasensory Darl, the impregnated Dewey Dell, and the uncomprehending little Vardaman. Of all the viewpoints, including the bemused acquaintances' and bystanders', I find Vardaman's the most compelling.
Unable to fully grasp the concept of death, he at first equates her passing to the death of a fish he has caught. At a later point he becomes concerned that his mother, encased in coffin, cannot breathe, and he finds an auger and bores into the coffin lid (and face) of his mother. Bore, bore, bore. The buzzards then hold council upon the coffin, attracted by the steadily decaying corpse.
I often think of As I Lay Dying in any number of circumstances. It is my wont. Lately I have been thinking of the inertial tendency of the president's votaries to refuse to see the obvious distaste for the administration's direction, and likewise the folly of inexorably plowing through with a doomed mission.
Like the pathetic Bundren clan, there is no turning back, and certainly no possibility of considering error. And so the court sycophants and jesters continue drilling the same futile holes. Bore, bore, bore. Insanely hoping to provide life-affirming oxygen to that which is dead. The journey is never in question, only the obstacles: swollen river, washed-out bridge, distrusting and cynical rubes and yokels, bystanders offering sane but unwanted advice.
The tribe will not heed. It is not the tribe's duty to heed: it is the tribe's duty to hump that coffin of increasingly rotted horror across the streams of context, the washed-out bridges of perspective, and the arid valleys of humility. Onward to the hallowed burial ground of hagiography, and legend. For many, in fact, it will be the toil of a lifetime, this furrowed insistence on glorifying the eminently failed, and the historically macabre.
To many it will simply be bore, bore, bore.
Drill, drill, drill is the only cure.
Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at February 2, 2010 7:46 PMwhere's portrait of the blogger as a young boy?
Posted by: rob sama at February 2, 2010 8:26 PMNail on the freaking head.
Well, if my understanding of those $50 words is anywhere near correct.
Bravo!
I vote for the cynical rubes.
Posted by: Cappy at February 2, 2010 10:09 PMVery good Vman.
The problem is, only 49% of us can see.
Excellent metaphor.
Posted by: Chris at February 3, 2010 7:24 AMPeople need to get off the sidelines and into the game. I'm with Joanie...drill drill drill and mine mine mine.
More trials and tribulations ahead.
Posted by: Yabu at February 3, 2010 8:15 AMI'd vote this post for another fisty, 50¢ words notwithstanding.
Posted by: Arcs at February 3, 2010 10:28 AMThe problem is, only 49% of us can see.
Posted by Skip at February 3, 2010 1:16 AM
Too bad some of them can't see that after years with a majority in congress they did absolutely nothing with it...unless you consider unconstitutional garbage to be an accomplishment.
Blind leading the blind, apparently.
Posted by: OA at February 3, 2010 10:59 AMI'd much rather my Congress did nothing with their power than to abuse it.
Posted by: Velociman at February 3, 2010 12:17 PMI'd much rather my Congress did nothing with their power than to abuse it.
My grandma said that to keep an idiot busy you just need a bit of honey and a cottonball. Put a drop of honey on each index finger and hand him a cottonball. Since you are very good at analogies, perhaps you can come up with a legislative version of the honey and cottonball diversion? Something to keep them tied up and distracted until the meter expires.
Posted by: PeggyU at February 3, 2010 12:55 PMI'd much rather my Congress did nothing with their power than to abuse it.
Posted by Velociman at February 3, 2010 12:17 PM
Would be nice, wouldn't it? Or better yet, the republicans could have rolled back some of the freedom sapping laws they complained about the democrats passing instead of doing nothing but passing their own freedom robbing laws.
Posted by: OA at February 3, 2010 1:47 PMOA,
If you're looking for an apologist for the Republicans you've come to the wrong shop, brother.
Posted by: Velociman at February 3, 2010 4:41 PMI'm not. My point was that Skip was being a bit naïve with his 49% remark.
Posted by: OA at February 3, 2010 8:28 PMThey first appeared in The French Revolution, are internationalist, and despise borders.
'You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you. Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourselves. Compute your gains: see what is got by those extravagant and presumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise all their predecessors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despise themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable. By following those false lights, France has brought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings. France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest, but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue.' --Edmunde Burke
May I suggest you work in the word risible once a day? It works for Ace.
Posted by: dr kill at February 3, 2010 9:51 PM"it is the tribe's duty to hump that coffin of increasingly rotted horror across the streams of context"
Not to mention, just like Addie, their ideas were a rotted horror before death.
Posted by: Chrees at February 8, 2010 1:15 PMI actually went out and got As I Lay Dying based on your post here. I'm not sure if I liked it or not - I think I did, but it was a bit odd in style so I'm still absorbing that. Doesn't help the oddness to have first person narrations from insane people. :)
Posted by: Nicole at February 9, 2010 1:26 PM