Parched with thirst am I, and dying.
Nay, drink of Me, the ever-flowing Spring....

-- Ancient tomb prayer

The Enemy

See Remembering Jacques Derrida.

"There is no teacher but the enemy."

-- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game,
   Tor paperback reprint, 1994, p. 262

"Différance is, for Derrida, the key concept
in order to understand what is here at stake."

-- Lacan Derrida, by Frida Saal

The following entries from October 2004
are related to the death of Jacques Derrida.

"George F. Kennan, a diplomat and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who formulated the basic foreign policy followed by the United States in the Cold War, died last night at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 101...."

1. A commentary on "Darkening of the Light," the I Ching, Hexagram 36:

"Here the climax of the darkening is reached. The dark power at first held so high a place that it could wound all who were on the side of good and of the light. But in the end it perishes of its own darkness, for evil must itself fall at the very moment when it has wholly overcome the good, and thus consumed the energy to which it owed its duration."

2. Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler
   
   
3. Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad
   

4. Narrativity: Theory and Practice, by Philip John Moore Sturgess

   Sturgess's book deals with the narrative logic of the above novels by Koestler and Conrad, as well as some Irish material:

   Narrativity: Theory and Practice

   TABLE OF CONTENTS Pt. I The Theory of Narrativity Introduction 3 1 Narrativity and its Definitions 5 2 A Logic of Narrativity 28 3 Narrativity and Double Logics 68 4 Narrativity and the Case against Contradiction 93 5 Narrativity, Structure, and Spatial Form 117 6 Narrativity and the French Perspective 139 Pt. II The Practice of Narrativity Introduction 161 7 The Logic of Duplicity and Design in Under Western Eyes 166 8 A Story of Narrativity in Ulysses 189 9 Narrative Despotism and Metafictional Mastery: The Case of Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds 235 10 A Double Logic and the Nightmare of Reason: Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon 260 Conclusion. A Reading of Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent 287 Bibliography and Further Reading 312 Index 317

Professor Matory is "a renowned expert on Brazil and on the Yoruba civilization of West Africa, which is world famous for its religious complexity and artistic creativity. He is equally noted for his study of such Latin American religions as Haitian 'Vodu,' Brazilian Candomblé, and Cuban Santería...."

The Harvard Crimson, January 7, 2005:

"I came here with the goal of dancing with Larry Summers, and I did it," Chinwe U. Nwosu ’08 said. "He’s a great dancer."

"Now I can say that 'Bootylicious' is our song," she added.

"Atabaque - a large tom-tom
that is used in Afro-Brazilian
religious celebrations"

-- The Sounds of Samba
at Yale

-- From Log24.net, Oct. 16, 2004:

Midnight in the Garden
continued

Harvard Magazine,
Sept.-Oct. 2004:

"With the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, Harvard couples were among those who took vows.... Lowell House master Diana Eck (left) and co-master Dorothy Austin tied the knot in Memorial Church on July 4, with Rev. Peter Gomes, Plummer professor of Christian morals, officiating."

Harvard's Lowell House: "In the Dining Hall are portraits of President Lowell and his wife; his sister Amy Lowell (Pulitzer prize winning poet, and a lover of scandal...)...."

Today's Harvard Crimson: "Stone joined members of the Foundation for lunch yesterday in Lowell House before delivering her remarks at Memorial Church last night..."

Site on Shakespeare's Sonnets:

Final Arrangements

Trude Rittmann, an Arranger
of Broadway Favorites, Dies at 96

Ms. Rittmann died on February 22.
For related arrangements, see the
five log24.net entries ending on that date.

"It's quarter to three..."

"The entertaining script was adapted from the novel by Charles Portis, by well-known, long time writer, Marguerite Roberts who liked to write scripts for tough men. She wrote scripts for MGM in the '30's, '40's, until she was blacklisted in 1952, for not revealing names to The Committee on Un-American Activities."

Ch-ch-Changes

"Everything changes but the law of change does not change."

"He who has perceived the meaning of change fixes his attention no longer on transitory individual things but on the immutable, eternal law at work in all change. This law is the tao of Lao-Tse, the course of things, the principle of the one in the many."

-- Richard Wilhelm (1923), introduction to the Book of Changes

White Stone

"I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language-- and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music."

In memory of Peter Foy,
who died in Las Vegas
on 2/17

Revelation 2:17:

"And I will give him a white stone...."

Related material:

2003 2/17: "immortal diamond"
2004 2/17:  "hard core"           
2005 2/17:  "the diamond"       

For an "elegant starburst," see

"Starflight," from 10/10, 2004 --

the date of
Christopher Reeve's death.

See also
Revelation 10:10 --

"And I took the little book
out of the angel's hand,
and ate it up; and it was in my mouth
sweet as honey: and as soon as I had
eaten it, my belly was bitter."

For the relationship of this verse to
the style of Hunter Thompson, see

From the Department of Justice:
"LSD generally is taken by mouth.
The drug is colorless and odorless
but has a slightly bitter taste."
Among the street terms for LSD
is "Superman."

3/16 Continued

The New Yorker, issue dated March 7, 2005, on Hunter S. Thompson:

"... his true model and hero was F. Scott Fitzgerald. He used to type out pages from 'The Great Gatsby,' just to get the feeling, he said, of what it was like to write that way, and Fitzgerald's novel was continually on his mind while he was working on 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,' which was published, after a prolonged and agonizing compositional nightmare, in 1972. That book was supposed to be called 'The Death of the American Dream,' a portentous age-of-Aquarius cliché that won Thompson a nice advance but that he naturally came to consider, as he sat wretchedly before his typewriter night after night, a millstone around his neck."

-- Louis Menand

"I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."
-- Daisy Buchanan in Chapter I of The Great Gatsby

"Thanks for the tip, American Dream."
-- Spider-Girl, in Vol. 1, No. 30, March 2001

Log24.net, Feb. 21, 2005: