tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post2446410405642180670..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Joseph Heller: "I'm cold": The Death of SnowdenUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-17502334979160791442012-02-11T04:36:23.997-08:002012-02-11T04:36:23.997-08:00The curious and sadly affecting aspect of all this...The curious and sadly affecting aspect of all this is seen when we find in history those who were, for whatever cause or reason, actually committed to some purpose to be achieved through warfare. There are of course wars of "principle", wars of "liberation". But things rarely stay settled for very long through such means -- and the means, so often the worst possible way to "settle things".<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/bernard-fall-death-on-street-without.html" rel="nofollow">Bernard Fall: Death on the Street Without Joy</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-62642672910939916182012-02-10T14:36:27.268-08:002012-02-10T14:36:27.268-08:00Perhaps this will be how the world ends, not with ...Perhaps this will be how the world ends, not with a bang, but a "there, there." Cold comfort. <br /><br />In 1914, Ouspensky noted the madness and the cynical "preparedness" in the truckloads of crutches the Tsarist government had ordered up as Russian forces marched off to engage the German army.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-78392133508637074162012-02-10T13:59:14.747-08:002012-02-10T13:59:14.747-08:00Stark seperation between our dreams and our bodies...Stark seperation between our dreams and our bodies. How far apart they are and only through sadness do we feel them come together mostly as fleeting seconds.<br /><br />Those golden ingots.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-60051662723110307572012-02-10T13:57:34.148-08:002012-02-10T13:57:34.148-08:00Catch-22 remains almost impossible to forget; than...Catch-22 remains almost impossible to forget; thank you for helping me to remember.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-67189327008180595482012-02-10T12:34:04.602-08:002012-02-10T12:34:04.602-08:00Tom,
"Horrors of War" -- continue, to b...Tom,<br /><br />"Horrors of War" -- continue, to be continued too, as we know (but what do we know of them, the horrors?) -- "I'm cold . . . I'm cold." "There, there."<br /><br />2.10<br /><br />light coming into cloud above blackness<br />of ridge, towhee standing on fence post<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> two systems of co-ordinates,<br /> that this place would<br /><br /> be, which follows from that,<br /> which is what follows<br /><br />cloudless blue sky reflected in channel,<br />shadowed green canyon of ridge above itSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-77405021920732537282012-02-10T12:09:18.413-08:002012-02-10T12:09:18.413-08:00Paul Fussell observes in Wartime, "What annoy...Paul Fussell observes in Wartime, "What annoyed the troops and augmented their sardonic, contemptuous attitude toward those who viewed them from afar was in large part the public innocence about the bizarre damage suffered by the human body in modern war. The troops could not contemplate without anger the lack of public knowledge of the Graves Registration form used by the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps with its space for indicating 'Members Missing.'" <br /><br />But public innocence, well...<br /><br />In childhood the guilty habit of loitering away from church and school and nuns & c. brought one frequently to the nether regions by the Rock Island tracks where, down two steps in a sort of miniature stoop-underworld, a woman named Molly sold candy, comic books & such. There one acquired trading cards. Inside each pack of cards, ingot-like, was contained a thick pink slab of powdered sugar-covered chewing gum. Yegads, the youthful teeth sacrificed to Topps and Fleer!<br /><br />One particularly fascinating line of cards had appeared on the market in the late 1930s and continued on through The War, depicting its naked savagery, all across the several and various fronts and theatres, in full colour lurid pulpy savage glory.<br /><br />The cards were sold by a company appropriately called Gum.<br /><br />The series was called Horrors of War. Actually there were two series of Horrors of War. The later series were tamer, from the early 1940s. More popular with tooth-decayed delinquents and vagrants of "my" period was the original series, full of garish scenes from the Spain and China conflicts of the 1930s, like the much-coveted vintage# 99, <a href="http://www.socollect.net/tc/scans/how/how99a3.jpg" rel="nofollow">Ghoulish Dogs haunt the Ruins of China</a><br /><br />And sometimes I wonder -- why is it the Rise of the Planet of the Apes took so darn long to get underway??TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-40446103553035025562012-02-10T11:18:55.447-08:002012-02-10T11:18:55.447-08:00So horrific. You have to wonder what we do as hum...So horrific. You have to wonder what we do as human beings . . . Lately I have been wanting to bury my head in the sand.Nin Andrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12643167108589844026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-33425752350256770692012-02-10T09:29:24.218-08:002012-02-10T09:29:24.218-08:00This is, obviously, incredible. Like the Randall ...This is, obviously, incredible. Like the Randall Jarrell poem, I first encountered this when I was a young teenager (I can picture where and when I read Catch-22; I can see the famous early paperback cover clearly in my mind's eye)and I've never forgotten it. Neither has Caroline and neither will Jane (eventually). Alan Arkin is magnificent, as always, yet Yossarian really lives in my brain totally separately from the film. CurtisACravanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00315707533118640284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-28140636064775588982012-02-10T06:47:12.782-08:002012-02-10T06:47:12.782-08:00"Heller's unforgettable scene projects a ..."Heller's unforgettable scene projects a terrible dynamics of horror, terrified tenderness, and irony... This 'primal scene' works because it is undeniably horrible, but its irony, its dynamics of hope abridged, is what makes it haunt the memory." -- Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 1975<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqtzDPSANwI" rel="nofollow">Catch-22: Yossarian (Alan Arkin) and Snowden: "there, there..."</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEizHF-NRYs&feature=related" rel="nofollow">Catch-22: Snowden's Funeral: "He died -- you don't get any older than that."</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com