I'll see your "King's Men" and raise you a"Stone Junction"
<http://books.google.com/books/about/Stone_Junction.html?id=woneSCNLbrYC> by
Jim Dodge
It is a novel I think Glen might have liked to have lived in (I know I
do), Rich may *be* living in, Doug might wish he had written, and all
the lab rats here (folks working for, with or formerly so, the DOE
Complex... self included) will cringe at. Tory if she is listening might
likely wish both to live in it and have written it... She may have been
living next door to Jim Dodge in Berkeley *while* he was writing it, and
Frank may have had occasion to throw him out of the UCB Library along
with Paul Erdos and Phillip K. Dick at closing time. And Stephen
Guerin? I think he might *be* Jim Dodge!
While it is an outlaw epic of the magnitude of Abbey's Monkey Wrench
Gang, it verges on alchemical conceits roughly crossing Carlos Castenada
with the likes of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.
As an aside, I was shocked to notice deeper in the Google Books
information, a set of passages matched to other books? Google is now
indexing phrases in literature? Who knew? Creepy but cool? Cool but
Creepy?
e.g.
Page 130
<http://books.google.com/books?id=woneSCNLbrYC&pg=PA130&vq=%22The+whole+of+art+is+one+long+roll+of+revelation.%27+And+it+is+revealed+only+to+those+whose+minds+are%22&source=gbs_quotes_r&cad=5>
- The whole of art is one long roll of revelation.' And it is revealed
only to those whose minds are?
Appears in 7 books from 1947-2003
<http://books.google.com/books?id=woneSCNLbrYC&qtid=9e7e7810&source=gbs_quotes_r&cad=5>
When Glen writes his "great american novel" (surely to be also an
alchemical potboiler, a digital noir happening, an outlaw epic?) all his
(published on paper or internet, indexed by Google) forgotten influences
and sources will be exposed. His Twitch will be a folding of the origami
paper, or perhaps a pull of the taffy.
Which tangents me (me, tangenting?) to Jiddu Krishnamurti's line
paraphrased roughly as: "your existence is like a piece of paper, every
experience you have is a fold, and your soul is the sum of all the
creases left". At the time, I was feeling a bit like a crumpled ball of
paper, but the metaphor still held all too well.
- Steve
glen wrote at 03/21/2013 06:36 AM:
I forget when I read it, though. I still have my copy
somewhere; perhaps there are notes or something that will remind me when
I read it first. Thanks.
Yep. Sure enough I have page 314 starred:
"We rode across Texas to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he left me to try
for north Arkansas. I did not ask him if he had learned the truth in
California. His face had learned it anyway, and wore the final wisdom
under the left eye. The face knew that the twitch was the live thing.
Was all. But, having left that otherwise unremarkable man, it occurred
to me, as I reflected upon the thing which made him remarkable, that if
the twitch was all, what was it that could know that the twitch was all?
Did the leg of the dead frog in the laboratory know that the twitch was
all when you put the electric current through it? Did the man's face
know about the twitch, and how it was all? And if I was all twitch how
did the twitch which was me know that the twitch was all? Ah, I
decided, that is the mystery. That is the secret knowledge. That is
what you have to go to Calfirnia to have a mystic vision to find out.
That the twitch can know that the twitch is all. Then, having found
that uot, in the mystic vision, you feel clean and free. You are at one
with the Great Twitch."
My copy seems to have been printed in 1982. And I don't think I started
writing in the margins of books until my senior year in high school
(1985). So, this would definitely be one of the, if not the, earliest
influences for my awareness of the twitch ontology.
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