V2nd chapter 9 Kalkfontein

[Robin Landseadel]

On Oct 13, 2010, at 1:25 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> There really is a Kalkfontein, but...
>
> Kalk is chalk, and a chalk fountain sounds pretty arid

the Caucasian Chalk Circle, very clever . . .

Sounds about right to me, considering the locale.

> While a lot of the stuff Profane does in his young fatboy funk is not
> so great, I tend to want to root for him, sympathize with him.
> Mondaugen, maybe some of the point is we're tempted to sympathize with
> him in  the same way, to adopt his point of view and excuse his
> depredations.

I think of the young author's potential levels of identity with the  
characters.

Profane is sloth incarnate, exactly what the older author was talking  
about when he wrote:

	In this century we have come to think of Sloth as primarily  
political, a
	failure of public will allowing the introduction of evil policies and  
the rise
	of evil regimes, the worldwide fascist ascendancy of the 1920's and  
30's
	being perhaps Sloth's finest hour, though the Vietnam era and the
	Reagan-Bush years are not far behind. Fiction and nonfiction alike are
	full of characters who fail to do what they should because of the  
effort
	involved. How can we not recognize our world? Occasions for choosing
	good present themselves in public and private for us every day, and we
	pass them by. Acedia is the vernacular of everyday moral life. Though  
it
	has never lost its deepest notes of mortal anxiety, it never gets as
	painful as outright despair, or as real, for it is despair bought at a
	discount price, a deliberate turning against faith in anything  
because of
	the inconvenience faith presents to the pursuit of quotidian lusts,  
angers
	and the rest. The compulsive pessimist's last defense -- stay still
	enough and the blade of the scythe, somehow, will pass by -- Sloth is
	our background radiation, our easy-listening station -- it is  
everywhere,
	and no longer noticed.

Though one is told early on of the inherent Sloth of Mondaugen we are  
also made aware of his anger, another one of the seven deadly, one  
that makes Kurt's character baggage all the heavier. Whether or not we  
can identify with Mondaugen doesn't strike me as important as the  
author's ability to identify with Mondaugen.

> Some kind of "chalk fountain" where they are trying to
> drink inspiration and coming up dry...like the desert creeping into
> Gebrail's family lands...

A lot of 'The World Turned Upside Down" to be witnessed in these  
parts, eh?

	"I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes"

====================================================

  	This in itself is an edifice of the great glory that
	has gone beyond, and the intuitive feeling of
	the American people, based on the assumption
	that the intelligence not only as Mencken once
	said, “He who underestimates the American
	pubic – public, will not go broke.” This is merely
	a small indication of this vast throng gathered
	here to once again behold and to perceive that
	which has gone behind and to that which might
	go forward into the future…we’ve got to hurdle
	these obstacles.