The Classics

Shusli asked me at the local store if I had seen "Going South" with Jack Nicholson. "No," was my answer. Her jaw dropped and we rented the movie. This was a sweet wonderful western romance of a young woman, Julia Tate (Mary Steenbergen) widowed by the Civil War who chooses Henry Moon (Jack Nicholson) to save him from the gallows to help dig gold in her mine as her husband. It was John Belushi and Mary Steenbergen's film debuts. Excellent and fun film. A must see. It came out in 1978.

I listened to three classic books on CD recently:

"Herzog," by Saul Bellow, is a novel about a professor in the '60's who is surviving a divorce. He goes through many different stages as he goes through understanding his situation and deals with it by writing letters to many different people, none of which he sends.

"Leaves of Grass," by Walt Whitman was another I listened to. I think it was good, but the reader read all of his poetry in the same tone making it a struggle to stay awake on the road. Walt was definitely gay. He Loved men and women's bodies. Loved sex. Loved the romance of war and despised war as well (he lived through the Civil War). I think it was good, but I think I should read it as well.

"The Dubliners," by James Joyce. I could not get through the 40 CD's of "Ulysses" as it was so hard to follow and was basically every intimate detail of a day in the lives of some folk. For that reason, I did not read "Finnegan's Wake," either. But, I did enjoy "The Dubliners." It is an intimate look of the lives of various individuals in Dublin, Ireland, around the late 1800's early 1900's. I enjoyed it. I am surprised, however, to see that Walt and James were allowed to live given the times and what people thought about such writing.