Category: Literature

Stephen Gammell drawings!

Farting Around

Quote on a friend’s email signature:

"We’re on this Earth to fart around, and don’t you let anyone tell you different."
—Kurt Vonnegut, jr.

Wise, wise words.

Comix

I’ve noticed Iowa City looks quite different during the day. Especially when it’s sunny out. Very nice indeed.

Lately I’ve gotten back into comix—Peter Bagge, Crumb, Julie Doucet, Lynda Barry, etc. This is because I now have time to read them and the library has a pretty good selection. I need to read some Los Bros Hernandez. Everything I read says they’re awesome, but I haven’t read their stuff yet. So I’m looking forward to that event.

I got my scanner working nicely after a few months of not dealing with it, so here’s a sketchbook image of a dude and crossbones from today:

Nausea

Lately I have been reading the english translation of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre. He won the 1964 Noble Prize in Literature. He is red-haired as I am. He is of the existentialist nature.

One memorable quote from it thus far is:

Undoubtedly, on his death bed…he told his wife…who had watched beside him for twelve nights,
“I do not thank you, Therese; you have only done your duty.”
When a man gets that far, you have to take your hat off to him.

Some rough stuff. Also in this book, he tries to stab his hand to change the nature of its existence. It only kinda works.

I have finished Moby Dick

And the moral is: Don’t go after large things. They are too large.

A Space Odyssey and Moby Dick

I have just finally seen 2001: A Space Odyssey and I’m just finally reading Moby Dick. I have recently begun reading the books and seeing the movies that seem to have a certain cultural significance by the amount of times I have heard or seen them referenced. In short, I am reading the books everyone read in high school and seeing the movies everyone saw in high school.

What I have found humorous in Moby Dick is this passage spoken by the head of a rowboat trying to catch up to a whale:

“Start her, start her, my men! Don’t hurry yourselves; take plenty of time—but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that’s all,” cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke.
“Start her, now give ’em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy—start her, all—but keep cool, keep cool—cucumbers is the word—easy, easy—only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys—that’s all. Start her!”