Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Better (Believe Me) than Beowulf

I have been a little overwhelmed by what I've read of Les Misérables at work these past two days. I cannot escape the feeling of having encountered the whole kit and caboodle in its most literal and active form. It prostrates me--somewhat unhelpfully, I'm also reading Faulkner; this afternoon, on the train, I took a further faint during the first story in Go Down, Moses when "Uncle Buddy forgot that. He was standing facing the front door and right in front of it, with the fyce right in front of him yelling fire and murder every time it could draw a new breath; he said the first he knew was when the fyce gave a shriek and whirled and Tomey's Turl was right behind it. Uncle Buck said he never even saw the door open; that the fyce just screamed once and ran between his legs and then Tomey's Turl ran right clean over him. He never even bobbled; he knocked Uncle Buck down and then caught him before he fell without even stopping, snatched him up under one arm, still running, and carried him along for about ten feet, saying, 'Look out of here, old Buck. Look out of here, old Buck,' before he threw him away and went on. By that time they couldn't even hear the fyce any more at all."

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