Friday, June 18, 2021

Does the name Yoknapatawpha County ring a bell?

Yesterday would have been my brother-in-law's 90th birthday if he hadn't died when he was 84. Two days before that would have been my mother-in-law's 114th birthday if she hadn't died when she was 79. Earlier this month would have been my step-sister's 80th birthday if she hadn't died when she was 62 (I think). I miss them all.

All I'm really saying, I think, is Time Marches On. One by one we shuffle off this mortal coil, we strut and fret our hour upon the stage and then are heard no more, to quote from a couple of Master Will's works.

To complete that last fragment, life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I don't know whether I'm waxing eloquent or I'm mired in depression. Possibly both. But Someone Else (not Master Will) said I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, so there's that.

This kind of rambling in blogging is the "stream of consciousness" style of writing that James Joyce was so fond of. It came almost automatically to Gertrude Stein, rose is a rose is a rose; a sparrow in the grass, alas; and so forth.

All but my most loyal readers might be put off by all this folderol, but if you come here, it goes with the territory.

More proof of my advancing decline, I suppose. I get more like the late, lamented Putz every day. Most of you don't know who I'm referring to. I don't actually know if he is late, but he is very much lamented in these parts, him with his odd spelling and innovative punctuation.

I must close now as the men in white coats are coming. I feel it in my bones. <<< >>> <<< >>>

6 comments:

  1. No, but I've just looked it up. Earlier this month it would have been my dad's 100th birthday. Couldn't have looked it up when he was around.

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  2. Tasker, but did you get the connection between Yoknapatawhpa County and anything in the post? In case you didn’t, I will tell you (and hope that other readers will also see it) that The Sound And The Fury, one of the many novels written by the Nobel-prize-winning American author William Faulkner, is set in fictional Yoknapatawpha County in not-so-fictional Mississippi, a state in the southern part of the United States. I mention this because the online article I happened upon when I looked up Yoknapatawpha County myself just now, mentioned Faulkner and mentioned many of his novels, but made no mention whatsoever of The Sound And The Fury, arguably his most famous work. As a certain character created by Lewis Carroll once said, “curiouser and curiouser.”

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  3. I knew there was a connection between William Faulkner and Yoknapatawhpa County but I did not know much else about it. I worry about those men in white coats sometimes too!

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    1. Bonnie, thank you for continuing to comment on my blog even when it might seem that I have finally lost my marbles.

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  4. Did you have a good visit with the men in the white coats? What I like about your blog is that you have the courage to record what we all think at times. I say BRAVO.

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    1. Thank you, Emma, for your vote of confidence. I am well aware that what you and I call courage is viewed as foolishness and even stupidity by others.

      As for the men in white coats, I told them they had the wrong address, that no one here needed their services.

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

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