Golly, but Joni Mitchell can make me sad. So much, perhaps, is impacted in those grooves. THERE'S A LEMON IN THE THE LOCKER Mooro talked about being moved. And his last title, I mean, 'subject heading', came close to moving *me*. BURNING THE LETTERS Some character talked about Sylvia Plath, and I knew what he meant, pretty much, though Alan Bennett didn't care for her, you know - no, not even for the diaries, *especially* not for the diaries. He told us so in the LRB. In *his* diary. How will, no, how do, AB's diaries measure up to SP's? They measure pretty OK, but he shouldn't overrate himself. I don't like his clipped and abbreviated style, for one thing. Write 'prose', man. The cover price is �2.75. ORTONARY WORLD I wondered for a while whether the character who talked about footy and the like (sorry, I forget his name; he was eloquent enough) was yet another of Welthorpe's guises. But would Welthorpe return under a guise? No, no, she'd come as herself. I hear tell that Kevan Cooke has not been wearing guises either. Cross him off the list. CARAMEL IN THE Llaura Llew returned, more than once. She talked about being inside eating (or was it drinking?) chocolate while it snowed outside. The stray conjunction made me think, Llaura, in your cardigan and with your 'roacking horse' and Irn-Bru, you ought to hear that song "Chocolate Snow". You have? Oh. BELCHERTOWN LIBRARY LlLl talked also of children's fiction in the USA. I remember that. It smelled nice. Even at the time, I thought it smelled nice. Heaven dares think what I'd dare think now. IT'S DANGEROUS TO HAVE GENE HACKMAN DREAMS I read a story tonight, while a bunch of Scousers were scoring impressive goals: it was "Train" by Joy Williams (1972). It features these lines: " Outside, the sky was lightening. Daylight was just beginning to flourish on the city of Jacksonville. It fell without prejudice on the slaughterhouses, Dairy Queens and courthouses, on the car lots, sabal palms and a billboard advertisement for pies. " I thought that was pretty good first time round, maybe cos it looks like a Lloyd Cole prototype. Typing it out, mind you, a catch a a surprisingly strong scent of 'The Dead'. Is it true, I wonder, that the train is the best way to travel the US, for the skies belong to the rich and the Greyhounds to the poor, but the rails to the broad bands and waves of eccentrics, ironies and contingencies? Maybe it's for answers to questions of that ilk that we must go to The American Short Story, or The English Pub. BEYOND METACULTURE Thanks to those who responded re. Trilling. My questions, by the way, were not meant to be marked 'urgent'. I don't think that either 'the self' or 'culture' are in the casualty ward, any more than they were yesterday or will be tomorrow. I was merely giving inadequate voice, out of interest, to a dead man's thinking on these matters. He died of cancer, by the way, and smoked ceaselessly. Dan Wakefield, his former student, tells us in NEW YORK IN THE 50S (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992) that he waved those ceaseless cigarettes like wands; and that the circles under Trilling's eyes were the deepest and blackest he'd ever seen, as though the indices of intellectual brawls in the back-alleys of the ideal. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+