HUD HUDSON
This week she has been reading Frederick Buechner's
Godric and
The Alphabet of Grace.
Xerxes felt so very sorry for the character of Burcwen in
Godric, and with respect to The Alphabet of Grace,
she wonders how one could fail to be intrigued by a book
which begins with these words To The Reader:
"I am a part-time novelist who happens also to be a
part-time Christian because part of the time
seems to be the most I can manage to live out my faith:
Christian part of the time when certain things seem real
and important to me and the rest of the time no Christian in
any sense that I can believe matters much to
Christ or anybody else. Any Christian who is not a
hero, Leon Bloy wrote, is a pig, which is a harder way of
saying the same thing. From time to time I find a kind
of heroism momentarily possible -- a seeing, doing, telling
of Christly truth -- but most of the time I am
indistinguishable from the rest of the herd that jostles and
snuffles at the great trough of life. Part-time
novelist, Christian, pig.
That is who I am. Who you are I do not know, and yet
perhaps I know something. I know that like me you
wake up each morning to a day that you must somehow live, to
a self that you must somehow be, and to a
mystery that you cannot fathom if only the mystery of your
own life. Thus, strangers though we are, at a certain
level there is nothing about either of us that can be
entirely irrelevant to the other. Think of these pages as
graffiti maybe, and where I have scratched up in a public
place my longings and loves, my grievances
and indecencies, be reminded in private of your own.
In that way, at least, we can hold a kind of converse.
And there is always some comfort in knowing that Kilroy also
was here."
***
Any comments you might have for Xerxes
can be sent to Hud[dot]Hudson[at]wwu[dot]edu.
I will see to it that she receives them.
***
Xerxes' Sophomore Year
Last week Xerxes was reading Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung's
Portraits of Vice
The week before Xerxes was reading Paul Johnson's
Intellectuals
The week before Xerxes was reading David Foster Wallace's A
Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
The week before Xerxes was reading Alexander Pope's An Essay
on Man
The week before Xerxes was reading Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon
River Anthology
The week before Xerxes was reading Sara Gruen's Water for
Elephants
The week before Xerxes was reading Zora Neale Hurston's Their
Eyes Were Watching God
The week before Xerxes was reading Ingmar Bergman's Images:
My Life in Film
The week before Xerxes was reading William Trevor's The Story
of Lucy Gault
The week before Xerxes was reading Anonymous's Everyman
The week before Xerxes was reading Eugene Field's Little Boy
Blue
The week before Xerxes was reading David Maine's
Fallen
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephenie Meyers's
Twilight and New Moon
The week before Xerxes was reading Gordy Slack's The Battle
Over the Meaning of Everything
The week before Xerxes was reading Nicole Krauss's The
History of Love
The week before Xerxes was reading Wallace Stevens's Thirteen
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
The week before Xerxes was reading The Dalai Lama's An Open
Heart
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's
Henry IV, Part II
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's Henry
IV, Part I
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's As You
Like It
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's
Antony and Cleopatra
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's
Macbeth
The week before Xerxes was reading Jelaluddin Rumi's The
Essential Rumi
The week before Xerxes was reading Harold Bloom's Where Shall
Wisdom Be Found?
The week before Xerxes was reading Anne Fadiman's The Spirit
Catches You and You Fall Down
The week before Xerxes was reading Leo Tolstoy's The Devil
The week before Xerxes was reading Colin McGinn's Shakespeare's
Philosophy
The week before Xerxes was reading Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephen Greenblatt's Will in
the World
The week before Xerxes was reading Martin Buber's I and Thou,
Meetings, and The Way of Man
Xerxes' Freshman Year
The week before Xerxes was reading Allan Chinen's
Once Upon a Midlife
The week before Xerxes was reading G.K. Chesterton's
St Francis of Assisi
The week before Xerxes was
reading Jean Toomer's
Cane
The week before Xerxes was reading
Ikhwān al-Safā's
The Animals' Lawsuit against Humanity
The week before Xerxes was reading Patrick Süskind’s Perfume
The week before Xerxes was reading Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the
Snark
The week before Xerxes was reading John Milton's Paradise Regained
The week before Xerxes was reading Dylan Thomas's The Force that
Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephen Crane's The Blue Hotel
The week before Xerxes was reading Gore Vidal's Creation
The week before Xerxes was reading A.S. Byatt's Possession
The week before Xerxes was reading C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce
The week before Xerxes was reading Mitch Albom's The Five People You
Meet in Heaven
The week before Xerxes was reading Dennis Potter's Blackeyes
The week before Xerxes was reading David Suzuki and Wayne Grady's
Tree: A Life Story
The week before Xerxes was reading James Hogg's Confessions of a
Justified Sinner
The week before Xerxes was reading Alexander Theroux's Theroux
Metaphrastes
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Titus Alone
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Titus
Groan
The week before Xerxes was reading Walter de la Mare's
The Three Royal Monkeys
The week before Xerxes was reading John Collier's His Monkey Wife
The week before Xerxes was reading Lois Lowry's The Giver
The week before Xerxes was reading Rudyard Kipling's Mandalay
The week before Xerxes was reading Ralph Helfer's Modoc
The week before Xerxes was reading Stuart McLean's Home
From the Vinyl Cafe
The week before Xerxes was reading Ossie Davis's Purlie Victorious
The week before Xerxes was reading George MacDonald's The Portent
The week before Xerxes was reading Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz &
Guildenstern are Dead
The week before Xerxes was reading Michael Phillips's George MacDonald
- A Biography
The week before Xerxes was reading Christopher Moore's The Stupidest
Angel
The week before Xerxes was reading Gordon Lightfoot's Minstrel of the
Dawn
The week before Xerxes was reading Sun Tzu's The Art of War
The week before Xerxes was reading Robert Graves's I Claudius
The week before Xerxes was reading Philip Ardagh's A House Called
Awful End
The week before Xerxes was reading John Milton's Paradise Lost
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Mr Pye
The week before Xerxes was reading J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows
The week before Xerxes was reading Riff Raff and Magenta's The Time
Warp
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's Timon of
Athens
The week before Xerxes was reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion
The week before Xerxes was reading e.e. cummings's anyone lived in a
pretty how town
The week before Xerxes was reading Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici
The week before Xerxes was reading C.S. Lewis's A Preface to Paradise
Lost
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephanie Plowman's The Road
to Sardis
The week before Xerxes was reading Alexander Theroux's Darconville's
Cat
The week before Xerxes was reading Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective
The week before Xerxes was reading T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock
The week before Xerxes was reading Matthew Scully's Dominion
The week before Xerxes was reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian
Gray
The week before Xerxes was reading the Prologue in Heaven from
Goethe's Faust
The week before Xerxes was reading Christina Rossetti's Goblin
Market
