Discretion

I likely shouldn't title post with my friend's names. It only leads to association, see? If only Obama understood that you can't mention the obese primates in the corner.

Geez


I spent Saturday rereading Grass' Meeting At Telgate as a preamble to tackling Simplicissimus by Grimmelshausen. I enjoyed the Grass but read most of it sitting outside and I awoke Sunday with a horrible cough and the trappings of a cold to occupy me during my week of holiday.

I have now read 125 pages of the Grimmelshausen and I have found within the very best of Rabelais and Robert Burton. Unlike the angst of the last 70 years G was writing at time where the idea of cataclysm was accepted as destiny per se, not that sectarian friction sparked a tinderbox across the continent -- all that was telluric, but above such was the very hand of God. The author strikes me as at best a skeptic, a Voltaire without protection, and thus bereft of bile. I am nearly finished with Book II and am impressed with its scope, it is nearly a compendium. It is easy enough to see its possible effect on later writers from Malaparte and Bulatovic to the master himself - Herr Grass.