[jheii]

Guyotat is heavy reading. I think Joyce was pretty open about his intentions with Ulysses, as far as writing a (nearly) unreadable book. At the same time he was trying to re-write the odyssey, outdo Shakespeare, and celebrate the absolutely mundane. It's the aesthetics of masturbation, piss, shit, and kidney pies. Now most people fall into the love-Joyce or hate-Joyce camp with neither side seeing room for an in between, but I've always been a fan of breaking convention. I think next on my list are Faulkner and O'Connor. I need to get in touch with my southern roots.

Speaking of Flannery O'Connor, here's a nice little story:
One of my favorite spots in Savannah is a cigar bar called Stogies. Interesting faces always passing through: businessmen, bartenders and waitresses, students, and random vagabonds. One night one of these businessmen and I were waxing celebratory about southern lit, and one of said vagabonds chimed in with some very insightful contributions that suprised the shit out of businessman and me both. Well this guy was very shy, disheveled, and soft spoken so it became hard to understand what he was saying as he poured Budweiser after Budweiser down his gorge and proceeded to tell us a story. His grandmother went to school with Flannery O'Connor, I got that much from the beginning, but the middle was completely lost behind his mumbly accent. I did manage to make out his last sentence which was: "Flannery O'Connor taught the chicken how to dance backwards." Needless to say, the whole crowd erupted into awesome laughter after hearing that.