Hilton Head Island: two news items; three books; no royalties; 83 push-ups

That the rich are getting richer is not news, but that the ten richest people in the world gained $64 billion in wealth in the day after Trump’s re-election is impressive.  At least to me.  I have no other comment.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/07/investing/billionaires-net-worth-trump-win/index.html

You may have also read that 43 monkeys have escaped from the facility in which they were being bred for research purposes here in the Low Country.  Reportedly there is a double door to their enclosure, but an attendant failed to secure both and forty-three monkeys, no fools, left for open spaces.  Seven stayed behind.  Freedom does not have universal appeal.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/11/43-research-monkeys-on-the-lam-still-playfully-exploring-police-say/

These monkeys are only a few of more than 10,000 being bred nearby.  I had no idea there are that many.  Fortunately most do not run for political office.

That monkeys are wandering around free in South Carolina presents almost infinite possibilities for jokes and cartoons, especially when it happened so soon after the election.

For some reason I am reminded of my fellow native Missourian, Mark Twain, observing more than a century ago, There is no distinctly American criminal class—except Congress.  

By coincidence I finished three books this morning.  One excellent.  Two not.

The excellent, perhaps great, is Evelyn Waugh’s WW2 trilogy SWORD OF HONOR.  In the preface he admits that in order to sell more books the publisher insisted it be originally published over several years in three volumes, OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN, MEN AT ARMS, UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, but that it is really only one story and should be read as such.  For SWORD OF HONOR he removed some duplication and passages he found tedious.

The novel follows Guy Crouchback who at the outbreak of WW2 has been living alone except for servants for several years at a family estate in Italy following an unhappy divorce.  He becomes an overage officer in a famous regiment and sees minor action in what is now Senegal and the Balkans.  His ex-wife comes back into his life as do many strange characters, some civilian, but mostly military.  Like all of Waugh SWORD OF HONOR is partly satirical and ironic, but it is also humane, compassionate and intelligent.  Some claim it the best novel of WW2.  I do not know about that.  I can think of others that are its equal, including Vasily Grossman’s very different LIFE AND FATE.  But SWORD OF HONOR is exceptionally good and a pleasure to read.

Here is a passage I particularly like:

Not a pleasure to read were the other two, both purporting to be poetry,  T.S. Eliot’s COLLECTED WORKS and THE ROSE OF TIME by the contemporary Chinese Bei Dao.  I have of course read Eliot’s major poems before.  I came across Bei Dao at the end of an anthology of Chinese poetry and was sufficiently interested to order THE ROSE OF TIME in paperback from Amazon.

While there are moments in Eliot, including from his Four Quartets, “Old men ought to be explorers”,  which I have quoted, too much of his poetry and even more that of Dao is so obscure as to be unintelligible.

I open THE ROSE OF TIME at random and find ‘Nightwatch’ which includes:

                    glass paperweights decode

                    writing’s wound of narration

                    how many black mountains blocked

                    where a nameless tune ends

                    blossoms scream clenched fists

I could include endless others but don’t want you to suffer needlessly.

I could do the same with Eliot.  I know he is considered a great poet, but perhaps obscurity has been mistaken for imagination and meaning. 

I went back to the anthology in which I first read Dao and was not impressed by what I found there.  I must have been in an odd mood when I first read his words.

The image in the preceding post was not my first t-shirt.  ‘A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind’ has graced t-shirts, greeting cards, place mats, coffee cups, and was even used in an ad for women’s shoes.  I don’t understand that one.

I receive royalties from none of them.

I do still receive very minor royalties from my books, more from Kindle editions than paper.

I did 83 push-ups this morning as required.  This is getting ridiculous.