Log24

— Title of a 1975 film. The late Martin Poll (previous post)
was the executive producer.

See also "A Corpse Will Be Transported by Express."

Related material—

This post was suggested by—

1. A quotation from Under the Volcano :
   "A corpse will be transported by express!"
2. The wish in a novel by Ernesto Sábato, who died Saturday, April 30,
   for a tombstone that says "PEACE"
3. A statement by another author in this morning's post:
   "I think of myself as writing about war," said Robson….
   "I try to get away from war, but I can't.
   War forces ordinary people to behave extraordinarily."

The above Sábato novel was translated as The Angel of Darkness .
Its Spanish title was "Abaddón el Exterminador " (Abaddon the Exterminator ).

From a customer review of the novel at Amazon.com—

"Early in the book a drunken outcast will see the vision of the Great Beast of Revelation. Near the end he will tell others of what he has seen. Meanwhile Sábato, who was originally trained as a scientist, seeks out the supernatural and the mystical in order to find an antidote to Stalinism, simple-minded 'Progress' and a superficial positivism."

For a more sophisticated vision of the Beast, see The Ninth Gate.

For Abaddon in a less sophisticated antidote to positivism, see The Chronicle of Abaddon the Destroyer: The War in Heaven .

I prefer Charles Williams's approach to War in Heaven .

If there is an afterlife, perhaps Sábato's experience there will be more lively than his novel's tombstone would imply.

He may, despite his wish for heavenly peace, turn out to be (in a phrase from this morning's post) a badly needed "ghost warrior."

“Next to the bookcase stands a wooden cabinet with 24 drawers that looks like something you might have seen in a library decades ago, or perhaps in an old apothecary. The drawers are marked with the names of her novels or characters in the novels and crammed with indexed notes.

She pulls open a drawer marked ‘Lozen,’ the name of a main female character in another historical western novel, ‘The Ghost Warrior,’ and reads a few of the index tabs: ‘social relationships, puberty, death, quotes….'”

— From an article on Lucia St. Clair Robson in The Baltimore Sun  by Arthur Hirsch, dated 1:31 p.m. EDT April 30, 2011*

From this  journal later that same day —

Robson’s most recent novel is Last Train from Cuernavaca .

“A corpse will be transported by express!”

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

* Update of 5:48 AM EDT May 3—
The same article was also published with a different  dateline— April 28.
Enthusiasts of synchronicity may lament the confusion, or they may
turn to April 28 in this journal for a different  24-part invention.
See also Art Wars, April 7, 2003 and White Horse .

“Then he began to narrate in his original style…. After this came disclosure, confession.  Then he accused, fulminated, stammered, blazed, cried out.  He crossed the universe like light….

He had no old friends, only ex-friends.  He could become terrible, going into reverse without warning.  When this happened, it was like being caught in a tunnel by the Express.  You could only cling to the walls, or lie between the rails, praying.”

Habeas Corpus

From St. Nicholas Versus the Volcano:

“The day begins with Yvonne’s arrival at the Bella Vista bar in Quauhnahuac. From outside she hears Geoffrey’s familiar voice shouting a drunken lecture, this time on the topic of the rule of the Mexican railway that requires that  ‘A corpse will be transported by express!’ (Lowry, Under the Volcano).”

In honor of a particular corpse, from last Friday, November 19, here is part of a Log24 entry from that day:

“The meaning of the poem is ‘the full organized body of all the extension and intension that we can find in it.’ “
— Allen Tate

A corpse will be transported by express!

The corpse in question is that of a children’s book illustrator.  The following screenshot from today’s online New York Times illustrates both extension and, in light of the Lowry quotation above, intension.

Drunk Bird

T. Charles Erickson
Shizuo Kakutani
in the 1980’s

Kakutani died yesterday.

“A drunk man will find his way home, but a drunk bird may get lost forever.”

— Shizuo Kakutani, quoted by J. Chang in Stochastic Processes (ps), p. 1-19.  Chang says the quote is from an R. Durrett book on probability.

Meaning:

A random walk in d dimensions is recurrent if d = 1 or d = 2, but transient if d is greater than or equal to 3.

From a web page on Kylie Minogue:

Turns out she’s a party girl
who loves Tequila:
“Time disappears with Tequila.  
  It goes elastic, then vanishes.”

Kylie sings
“Locomotion”

From a web page on Malcolm Lowry’s classic novel Under the Volcano: 

The day begins with Yvonne’s arrival at the Bella Vista bar in Quauhnahuac. From outside she hears Geoffrey’s familiar voice shouting a drunken lecture this time on the topic of the rule of the Mexican railway that requires that  “A corpse will be transported by express!” (Lowry, Volcano, p. 43).

For further literary details in memory of Shizuo Kakutani, Yale mathematician and father of book reviewer Michiko Kakutani, see

Santa Versus the Volcano.

Of course, Kakutani himself would probably prefer the anti-Santa, Michael Shermer.  For a refutation of Santa by this high priest of Scientism, see

Miracle on Probability Street

(Scientific American, July 26, 2004). 

Kylie on Tequila

From a web page on Kylie Minogue:

Turns out she’s a party girl who loves Tequila:
“Time disappears with Tequila.
It goes elastic, then vanishes.”

From a web page on Malcolm Lowry’s classic novel
Under the Volcano: 

The day begins with Yvonne’s arrival at the Bella Vista bar in Quauhnahuac. From outside she hears Geoffrey’s familiar voice shouting a drunken lecture this time on the topic of the rule of the Mexican railway that requires that  “A corpse will be transported by express!” (Lowry, Volcano, p. 43).