THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: HONG KONGER’S ARE EVIL? Airplane trip on Cathay Pacific from EWR to Hong Kong and no Betsy lager beer or fancy ice cream for me. I end up queasy with a full bladder in some huge area with suitcases and crates. I pee all over myself and vomit inContinue reading ““Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: HONG KONGER’S ARE EVIL?”
Category Archives: literature
RKS Literature: Worsening Hunger (George Orwell)
“On the second day I thought of pawning my overcoat, but it seemed too far to walk to the pawnshop, and I spent the day in bed, reading the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was all that I felt equal to, without food. Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like theContinue reading “RKS Literature: Worsening Hunger (George Orwell)”
RKS Japanese Literature: The Last Stages of Ritual Suicide (seppuku) of Lieutenant Takeyama Shinji (Yukio Mishima)
“Was this seppuku? He was thinking. It was a sensation of utter chaos, as if the sky had fallen on his head and the world was reeling drunkenly. His will power and courage, which had seemed so robust before he made the incision, had now dwindled to something like a singe hair-like thread of steelContinue reading “RKS Japanese Literature: The Last Stages of Ritual Suicide (seppuku) of Lieutenant Takeyama Shinji (Yukio Mishima)”
RKS Literature: The Almost Pleasure of Being Down and Out (George Orwell)
“And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, as knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs-and well here are theContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Almost Pleasure of Being Down and Out (George Orwell)”
RKS Japanese Literature: A Soldiery Lecture by Lieutenant Takeyama Shinji to His Wife Reiko (Yukio Mishima)
“They refrained from taking a honeymoon trip, these being times of national emergency. The couple spent their wedding night at this house. Before going to bed Shinji knelt formally on the matted floor with his sword laid at his knees and bestowed on his wife a soldierly lecture. A woman who had become the wifeContinue reading “RKS Japanese Literature: A Soldiery Lecture by Lieutenant Takeyama Shinji to His Wife Reiko (Yukio Mishima)”
RKS Japanese Literature: Used Bathwater from the Prison (Nagai Kafū)
“And on sultry summer evenings, peering through sparse reed blinds, I have had a clear view of the secrets of these people’s households. How well I recall passing by here on afternoons where the prisoner’s used bathwater would gush down the drainage ditches below the tenement’s windows, raising clouds of foul-smelling steam. It must beContinue reading “RKS Japanese Literature: Used Bathwater from the Prison (Nagai Kafū)”
RKS Japanese Literature: The Pure Art of Conversation Lost on People Like This (Nagai Kafū)
“Now the argument centres on him until the evening dishes line up beneath the dusky lamp-boiled beans, pickled vegetables, a stew of fish bones and scallions, and a rice tub smeared with dirty fingerprints. Gathered around their flimsy table, the family talk about uncle so-and-so, who showed up wanting to know the cost of Mother’sContinue reading “RKS Japanese Literature: The Pure Art of Conversation Lost on People Like This (Nagai Kafū)”
RKS Literature: In Poverty You Discover Boredom (George Orwell)
“You discover the boredom which is inseparable from poverty; the times when you have nothing to do and, being underfed, can interest yourself in nothing. For half a day at a time you lie on your bed, feeling like a jeune squelette in Beaudelaire’s poem. Only food could rouse you. You discover that a manContinue reading “RKS Literature: In Poverty You Discover Boredom (George Orwell)”
RKS Japanese Literature: Making the Yellow Man Believe in the White Man’s Yellow Peril (Nagai Kafū)
“Here, then, is proof that cruelty to animals is an issue only to a few Christians, not a pressing problem for the whole of Japanese society. Is this a matter for grief or celebration? Witnessing these scenes only deepens my sense that the Japanese are a warlike people who are sure to defeat the RussiansContinue reading “RKS Japanese Literature: Making the Yellow Man Believe in the White Man’s Yellow Peril (Nagai Kafū)”
RKS Literature: In Poverty You Discover Hunger (George Orwell)
You discover what it is like to be hungry. With bread and margarine in your belly, you go out and look into the shop windows. Everywhere there is food insulting you in huge, wasteful piles; whole dead pigs, baskets of hot loaves, great yellow blocks of butter, strings of sausages, mountains of potatoes, vast GruyèreContinue reading “RKS Literature: In Poverty You Discover Hunger (George Orwell)”
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