V2nd chapter 9 Kalkfontein

[Michael Bailey]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Robin Landseadel  wrote:

>>
>> Kalk is chalk, and a chalk fountain sounds pretty arid
>
> the Caucasian Chalk Circle, very clever . . .
> Sounds about right to me, considering the locale.
>

I think the Dude refers to that in one of his Magic Eye essays.
I've not seen it and there doesn't seem to be an available video to buy or rent.
What?  Read it? (eek)


> 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.
>

if that isn't an imponderable...
though no doubt you mean as evidenced in the work.

Not only does young Mondaugen leap out like a tongue of fire from V.
to GR, he also loops back into V. having survived WWII to sit porcine
in a suit of European cut in the Rusty Spoon.  I don't see him as
devoid of conscience so much as stumped on how to fix things, given
that his interests and talents do not vector toward fixing human
problems (he sez to Weissmann, Politics is a kind of engineering,
isn't it?  With people as your raw material.  p262) His metanoia, his
lens, his little antennas focus on what interests him, and perhaps he
is blindsided by the brutality that it seems everybody in Sudwest is
practicing and urging on him...

Not things that he'd think up to do on his own, but he doesn't have a
moral compass to gainsay the evil influences in 1922 in Africa.

In 1956, in the Rusty Spoon, communing with or confessing to Stencil,
does he display any insight or remorse?  Does Stencil even look for
any?



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

well I just thought it was neat that the song has a guy in a wagon
(like Mondaugen and also Rev Gatlin and Merle)

====================================================
>
>        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.
>
>
>
>



-- 
- But you can wade in the water
and never get wet
if you keep on doin' that rag (Grateful Dead, "Doin' That Rag")