2. You may be surprised to learn that I was in Walmart at 9 o'clock last night, where I was waiting for my son to buy a 10-dollar cellphone and killing time by reading The Strategy of Satan. Apparently it is all Satan's fault when I get distracted from the domestic sphere. At this very moment Satan could be making me type this satirical comment. Also, news flash: wifely "subjection" to her husband is not the same as "subjugation." I did not quite comprehend the exact difference in meaning, but perhaps I was distracted by the barrage of fluorescent light. Or maybe Satan is interfering with my study skills.
3. I hate Walmart. But Walmart has cornered the market in rural America. It is hard to never go there when there is nowhere else to go.
4. Before we went to Walmart, we went to the Strand theater in Skowhegan and watched True Grit. This movie is much, much better than Walmart.
5. Even though I had previously listened to a Fresh Air radio segment in which the Coen brothers explained to Terry Gross about animal protection laws for moviemakers and exactly how they had managed to make the horses in this film look injured when they were not, I still started to weep when Little Blackie failed and had to be shot. But even as I was crying, I wondered why I was. Apparently, sentiment is a complicated thing.
4 comments:
Thanks to you and Baron, as always, for Learning Landscapes and like-minded resources. As for Satan, a friend recently sent me a link to a Franciscan Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico with this thought: Daily Meditation: Culture of Elders -- Sin as "the refusal to keep growing." The saint & true elder grow from everything, even & especially their failures... A Jesuit like Father Pirrone embodied some of the same messages vis-a-vis his Prince. I love Terry Gross interviews. Listen all the time.
I love how you got the Prince into this conversation! And you're right about Father Pirrone; he's an odd but crucial character in "The Leopard," which deals so cogently with the ambiguities of sin and faith.
Fundamentalist tracts such as that Satan book make me crazy, but I also find them strangely compelling. Some kind of lingering Miltonic struggle, perhaps.
Perhaps "Fundamentalist tracts such as that Satan book" help to explain Wlamart.
I think you're right, Ruth. On the other hand, they don't seem to be selling very quickly. There were a lot of copies on the shelf, and they were kind of dusty too.
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