Milton, I Lose My Mind Over A Leg of Lamb, Saturday in Muncie!

MW came over, we went to Hand and Fork for breakfast, then to Minnetrista for the Farmer's Market. MW was quite impressed with both the restaurant and the market. We saw two, three, vendors at the market from Madison County. MW says Anderson has a farmer's market, which she has not visited. The Madison County seemed to have no interest in the Anderson market.

I bought a leg of lamb, which broke my budget. $74. I did not ask, I promised to buy. It will feed me all week.

 

We saw CC and her rummage sale. Not looking good for her.

 Back here, deciding not to go back downtown for the festival, I procrastinate a bit. Still recovering from the leg of lamb shock.

On The Millions, Ed Simon asks Why Read John Milton? Well, I did while in prison. Mr. Simon catches the problems and the benefits of reading Paradise Lost.

I’m aware that Milton has, if still firmly entrenched within a kind of Platonic canon, largely disappeared from most peoples’ cultural literacy, even while his influence on English literature is arguably only surpassed by Shakespeare. Because Milton, in his buckled shoes and black coat, comes across as the oldest, deadest, and whitest of old, dead, white authors, it’s easy to turn away from him, even as he was arguably far more radical, revolutionary, and rebellious than might be supposed by those who’ve never had the privilege of encountering him (he, after all, wrote many a pamphlet advocating for cutting off the king’s head, a wish that soon came true). There are reasons to mourn Milton’s eclipse; at the same time it’s also understandable, even if I wished more people were familiar with him. Our lives are rounded abruptly, and the days are finite, so to dedicate yourself to Paradise Lost in a world with so many other pressing concerns, so many other works to read, a veritable universe of art deserving of attention, can seem more an eccentricity than a necessity, the reading of Milton akin to an archaic hobby like soap-making or scrimshaw. But surely these hobbies have their own unique pleasures, their own meditations and contemplations, their own joys, their own beauties....

Over at The Guardian, Emily H. Watson asked, ‘Somehow I failed to clock her magnificence’: was the world’s first literary hero a woman? and lightly touches on how she dealt with the question:

I first became interested in Inanna while rereading the Epic of Gilgamesh. She is something of a baddie in the story, throwing a massive sulk when Gilgamesh refuses to marry her. But what an interesting and unusual creature she is, even glimpsed sideways, in a story about the man who spurned her. Somehow, on earlier readings, I had failed to clock her magnificence.

It was then that I researched the myths in which Inanna is a central figure. There’s the story of her descent into the underworld, for example, which leads to her horrifying death and subsequent resurrection. Her decision to send her lover Dumuzi, the sheep god, to the underworld in order to secure her own freedom. Her war against Enki, the lord of wisdom, which concludes with her thoroughly vanquishing him. I decided then that Inanna deserved her own epic, and set out to write it in novel form.

Writers, write – and they read. Inspiration comes in many ways. 

Kat, who runs Thornfield Hall blog, published The Astonishing Booker Prize Longlist, 2023 and Sampling the Booker Prize Longlist: Awed by Paul Harding’s “This Other Eden”.  

Harding’s prose is quietly transcendent and lyrical. His storytelling bears the influences of Toni Morrison, Faulkner, and  Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Biblical and classical themes are woven into the narrative: Esther Honey passes on the family flood myth  to the new generarion: in the 19^th century, a hurricane and flood crippled and killed many in their family and community. She says, Noah had the ark, we had the island.   

Reading the long-list establishes my credentials of not being au courant – I recognize none of the titles, and the only writer's name recognizable is Sebastián Barry. I have no clue why I know that name.

Sheila Kennedy on her blog published Okay–Let’s Talk About Free Speech. She describes how she taught the First Amendment, which I suggest you who think Trump's free speech rights are in danger read the whole post, but even more I agree with her commentary:

I’ve read several columns by people who should know better, gravely opining that prosecutors will have to establish whether Trump actually believed the garbage he was spewing, and noting that making such a showing is difficult. Those writers need to re-take  high school civics. As a better-educated pundit noted, I may be genuinely convinced that I am entitled to your car, but stealing it is still a crime.

Trump’s MAGA defenders can scream about the Department of Justice “criminalizing” Free Speech,  but those protestations will only sound plausible to people who slept through their high school government class.

This whole debate proves my point about the deplorable level of Americans’ civic literacy.

I feel so much having read Jail and Prison: What's the Difference?. Now, I know where I was from 2011 to 2021.

Well, posts written.

Done for the night.

sch