Author: L.E. Hansen

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Truth & Happiness

Vintage Books & Anchor Books

Vintage Books and Anchor Books

“I don’t care about truth. I want some happiness.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

This is not always about the beautiful and rich. Here is the same thought problem today, is it not? From the people who don’t care if their leader and savior lies or not. It doesn’t bother them. It does not bother them as long as they get their happiness. If they don’t have it yet they’re willing to wait because they see enough of the ugliness and anger being acted out to give them hope. It’s what they want. And they don’t care about the truth.

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The Human Form

To start out the week with Monday moans. Here’s the inspiration to diet with fresh resolve. Right?

Dance portraits by Alexander Yakovlev.

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Photos & Story posted by Shuffle Sketch

There aren’t enough photos of the human form itself, male and female, but I thought these could do for now. The ballet form is the most expressive and what is presented here. I had published the photo of Rudolph Nureyev and some comments a while back. (That’s Rudy below). That was in December, 2017. Here’s what Rudy had to say about dance: “Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.” True that, about many things.

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Lessons of History

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From History Books

Mrs. Lintott: “Now. How do you define history, Mr. Rudge?”
Rudge: “Can I speak freely, Miss? Without being hit?”
Mrs. Lintott: “I will protect you.”
Rudge: “How do I define history? It’s just one fucking thing after another.”

~Alan Bennett, The History Boys (2006)

What a wonderful room to get lost in. Right now though, I’m lost in the writing of words for the novel I’m working on.  BTW, I don’t think we learn anything from history. It seems to me that the human race just keeps making the same mistakes and the same wars over and over again. We never learn our lessons.

And that’s the waaaaaay things are.

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Meanwhile, In Finland II

 has just published an article for Paris Review about the resurgence of Finland, in of all things, literature. Furthermore, by Branding. Calling attention to oneself is just not something the Nordic adventurers do. In most of those cultures there’s even a word for it. In Sweden it’s lagom, in Norwegian it’s janteloven. But then, witness the Swedish break with tradition that put itself on the world stage with IKEA, H&M, Spotify, Skype, Absolut Vodka, ABBA, Stieg Larsson, etc.

Not one to sneeze at success, and reestablishing itself as a literary being, yet more so as a feminist literary happening, we have FINNISH WRITERS JOHANNA SINISALO, SOFI OKSANEN, AND LAURA LINDSTEDT.

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I was going to write a bit more in this post, mostly about the authors but such a distraction were the book titles! If I’m ever to get this posted I’ll need to stop. Just note that I’ve got a few of the books in my cart. More on this later.

Picking up the post, or part two, the next day:

For one, Oksanen is cool. She has been described by the Finnish press as a feminist goth. But it doesn’t stop there. She writes well. That’s the best you can say about an author. She has been cut from a different cloth however. She doesn’t just write, write well, and often, she promotes. Her self marketing has paid off: she was one of the first Finnish authors to sign with an international literary agent. in France alone, Purge sold more than one hundred seventy thousand copies.

Apparently the most intriguing thing about the Finnish uprising is the uniqueness of the writing. For example, Johanna Sinisalo’s The Core of the Sun presents a new human subspecies of submissive women for sex and procreation while undertaking the capture and sterilization of those women unwanted for reproduction: the intelligent, the independent, the outliers. The government does not want the type of citizen they might produce.

Book covers have been copied from Amazon pages

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I’m in the process of deciding which books/authors I’ll start out with. And I haven’t even gotten to LAURA LINDSTEDT yet.

 

By the way, my annotated copy of The Big Sleep is on the way. Oh what joy to be watching for the mailman, a child again in anticipation!

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Book Ramblings

IMG_1036I had threatened to purchase this and of course did. I like the outlier things—to wear, to read, to view. As if this is any surprise by now. And I am enjoying the book tremendously. It’s one of those which leads the reader down all sorts of rabbit holes. Terence McKenna is a favorite for Lin to follow, describe, and quote from. I feel I should have known about or read some of McKenna’s stuff. Some of the stories about him seem so familiar. And I’ve read some Kathleen Harrison, whom he wed in 1976. They all did psilocybin, DMT, magic mushrooms. When tripping the emphasis is on the encounters with strange creatures who live in the higher planes.

The creatures: tykes, fairies, self-articulating sentences, translinguistic elves, friendly fractal entities, elf legions of hyperspace, meme traders, art collectors, and syntactical homunculi. I have italicized the particular descriptors which I favor. Lin describes his higher beings as faceless, bodiless, genderless abstractions. The trippers all emphasize that these beings are so very much brighter than humans, are much more advanced, and are fully aware of us though we, in everyday reality, are unaware of them.

I’ll continue reading as I’m not through the book yet, and the marginalia continues to grow. (Slowing the process.) This book is not for everybody, thought the title should clarify for any prospective reader. For me, this is a book I’ll read again.

The next beauty on the dock is penguinRandomHousefrom our old pal Raymond Chandler. Penguin Random House had released this proposed gem.  

The first edition of The Big Sleep was released in 1939 and soon became acknowledged as a masterpiece of noir. The Big Sleep helped to define a genre. Today it is celebrated and remains one of the most revered stylish novels of the twentieth century. The class A writing and characters have made this novel a champion of the genre novel as literary fiction. While some continue to battle the genre uniform as a sub species, others are willing to display it in literary fiction.

I already have it in my cart. Arriving soon!