American Pastoral
I used to think it casually, like the way of a joke, but more and more like freezing ice at decreasing temperatures, it’s become such symbolic truth & reality: a domesticated cat really can teach… well not so much teach as be wisdom—the way W.Faulkner most eloquent-strikingly put it having the rain outside shaping the wagon so as there was a wagon being there—teaching what is man-made, what is life, and what one makes of what is life all along, what is right and or nor wrong, what is leisure, what is purpose, what is to make of perspective; and what of it all, the compassion from the frame of this body to the suffering and admiration for this massive ground that we are myopic to stand on, save for this infancy-stage technology of communication; and what of comfort,
And what of mothers (or, as I will soon allude to, fathers) dying—in no tragic sense of the word, more so living towards death, the way an orchid in the soil would—to perfect comfort for their child—that has become their purpose—in this modern world,
and what of, them succeeding, their bequeathed child in this always-bloody world that all around & really can never near utopia, much less achieve it, much less, much, much, less…
I cannot see the standard of merit understood by the Pulitzer institution, I kept thinking… until the Chapter 3 of Part I of Phillip Roth’s American Pastoral, quite possibly the most jolting, timelessly (in my lifetime) consuming, memorable chapter I have ever read. And to think, I almost dropped the book before then to move onto next on backlogged-list—and now I have so much more to look forward to. The immigrant experience—shut up, already(*see below)---the American experience is for lack of a better word rich, and, second to love, is the reason why I itch a gigantic pain in my bones, to write, something in my eyes that deserves My Pulitzer—
*Maybe I realize, this to do, if I want to do: write American by forcefully—only because force is needed-having America under the feet, and start the footprints from there. Because I’m already here. Problem: Too obsessed, struck at getting the damn place under the feet
It’s mine. Stop fighting; or you’ll be caught in/stuck throwing punches in the dark instead of lifting my eyelids to see the light on.
And what of mothers (or, as I will soon allude to, fathers) dying—in no tragic sense of the word, more so living towards death, the way an orchid in the soil would—to perfect comfort for their child—that has become their purpose—in this modern world,
and what of, them succeeding, their bequeathed child in this always-bloody world that all around & really can never near utopia, much less achieve it, much less, much, much, less…
I cannot see the standard of merit understood by the Pulitzer institution, I kept thinking… until the Chapter 3 of Part I of Phillip Roth’s American Pastoral, quite possibly the most jolting, timelessly (in my lifetime) consuming, memorable chapter I have ever read. And to think, I almost dropped the book before then to move onto next on backlogged-list—and now I have so much more to look forward to. The immigrant experience—shut up, already(*see below)---the American experience is for lack of a better word rich, and, second to love, is the reason why I itch a gigantic pain in my bones, to write, something in my eyes that deserves My Pulitzer—
*Maybe I realize, this to do, if I want to do: write American by forcefully—only because force is needed-having America under the feet, and start the footprints from there. Because I’m already here. Problem: Too obsessed, struck at getting the damn place under the feet
It’s mine. Stop fighting; or you’ll be caught in/stuck throwing punches in the dark instead of lifting my eyelids to see the light on.
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4:03 AM
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