Thursday, May 31, 2007

hurriedly

We leave tomorrow for a long weekend of "holiday," which as every parent of preschoolers knows involves much more labor than any two weeks of "work."
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Revisiting Ronald Johnson's early work has many pleasures, among them revisiting Blake's illuminated books (too little looked into in the past decade) & happening back upon William Empson's wonderful bitchy Milton's God, full of wonderfully human anti-Christianisms that make Christopher Hitchens seem like a hamfisted angry drunk. E.g: "I think the traditional God of Christianity very wicked, and have done since I was at school, where nearly all my little playmates thought the same."
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Please keep me away from The Fellowship of the Ring; I fell into the first three chapters today, & can see the next two weeks – which must, must be occupied with Johnsonizing & indexing – being simply washed away on a tide of pleasure reading.

1 comment:

E. M. Selinger said...

Well, Mark, you know that Ron was a fan. "A handshake under the mallorn trees" and all that. Surely some research is in order!

(Good to hear you're hustling on your Parnassus piece as I am. I envy you: I have Lorna Dee Cervantes, Martin Espada, and Victor Hernandez Cruz to finish up while you trip the light Johnsonian!