1. Last spring I picked up this copy of Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for around a dollar and a half. Only when I got home did I discover the former owner's inscription inside. As an exhibit of a peculiarly enduring stylistic mode that might be dubbed 'Teen-Scourge,' it caused me such absurd delight that I believe it's worth sharing.
(NB: If you happen to have small children at hand, you may wish to refrain from reading aloud.)
"Annie Dillard is the anti CHRIST!! Come Fucking On the Birds Prompt?!? What the Hell. The shear (sic) horror of this bullshit. Fuck McClure for not only making us read this shit, but write on it as well. Fuck Annie Dillard and her in tune with Nature bullshit. [heart] the haters of Annie Dillard"
2. A recent purchase of Six Nonlectures by e.e. cummings included the bonus, on the book's final page, of an autobiographical prose meditation in a style emulating cummings' own syntactical eccentricities -- and making explicit reference, in at least a few places, to the content of the book. As book-scribbling goes, here's an entry on a more epic scale than 'Teen-Scourge.'
What to make of both of these entries? Maybe the weird readerly proximity they offer is an end in itself. The transcribed outrageousness of 'Teen-Scourge,' the vulnerability of the scribble, the messy, unguarded reflexivity of the thoughts -- these are yet a few more things e-books cannot give us.
"Here I am and I'm fairly sure I wish I wasn't. But where then? It is what it is. There are no mistakes. How can I expect those around me to grasp that when my own Is and Now seem like mistakes to me -- he who reassures myself with this Zen-ism. One minute I am the only sane/capable human in sight. But since/if that is so, then it's wrong in that sanity is an agreement -- a consensus. But what about the individual. The Who? Not the band. don't mean to babble, but I always have. Babbled or meant to? Don't know. Fuck, now I'm interrogating myself. "Finished too much for what they did." Is playing disappearing? Am I working toward playing? Does that even make sense? to Me? to the consensus? Fuck them! They do it and die unhappy. Am I sitting still to have or because I have to? Time will tell. But it whispers. And stutters. And often informs to late [sic]. Work time.
"I always wonder if I'm an individual or half a pair. Can one really be both? Here? Now?
"I've been working and waiting toward joy (?!) and now power/vengeance. Are these worthy? Or are they just them? Where does Being fit in? I haven't observed myself/felt myself doing that in so long. Is there a conflict between Being and Achieving? Happinesss [sic], Power, Contentment, Peace. Surely not but possibly so. And probably yes? Who said that?"
