HUD HUDSON

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That's not me.  (I'm over here.)  It's Xerxes in her best Sunday dress.

This week she has been reading Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place.

 

 

Xerxes was told that The Last Unicorn was a children's story.  She doesn't think so.

The language in this novel is unusually rich and luxurious, and the moral of the story

(if there even is one) does not seem to be exclusively aimed at children.

Here's a little song that won't give anything away, but that caught Xerxes' eye.

 

When I was a young man, and very well thought of,

I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied.

I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins,

And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied.

 

But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them know

The secret I shelter and savor and save.

I wait for the one who will see through my seeming,

And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'

 

The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens;

The ladies went by me like snow on the wind.

I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled,

And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned.

 

But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them see

There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave.

My lady is late, but she'll find I've been faithful,

And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'

 

At last came a lady both knowing and tender,

Saying, 'You're not at all what they take you to be.'

I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,

And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea.

 

And I say to myself, when there's time for a word,

As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved,

'Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger,

And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.'

 

---

 

In To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell writes:

 

"The grave's a fine and private place,

But none I think do there embrace."

 

But Beagle's A Fine and Private Place shows that thought to be mistaken

and teats us to a love story between ghosts in the graveyard.  Xerxes was

quite impressed to learn it was written when its author was only 19 years old.

 

"Sitting up all night would be pointless if somebody you loved

wasn't sitting up with you, picking out music to play and helping

you kill the bourbon.  Walking by yourself in the rain is for

college kids who think loneliness makes poets."

 

 

 

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.

***

 

 

 

 

Last week Xerxes was reading Yann Martel's Life of Pi

The week before Xerxes was reading Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game

The week before Xerxes was reading William F. May's A Catalogue of Sins

The week before Xerxes was reading Henry Fairlie's The Seven Deadly Sins Today

The week before Xerxes was reading Jorge Luis Borges's Ficciones

 

 

Xerxes' Sophomore Year

 

 

The week before Xerxes was reading Gioconda Belli's Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand

The week before Xerxes was reading G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday

The week before Xerxes was reading Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio

The week before Xerxes was reading C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves

The week before Xerxes was reading Steven Schwartz's The Seven Deadly Sins

The week before Xerxes was reading Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens

The week before Xerxes was reading Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs

The week before Xerxes was reading Sy Safransky's Four in the Morning and Sunbeams

The week before Xerxes was reading Daniel Levitin's This is Your Brain on Music

The week before Xerxes was reading Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam

The week before Xerxes was reading Paul Woodruff's Reverence

The week before Xerxes was reading Richard Yates's Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

The week before Xerxes was reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead

The week before Xerxes was reading Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass

The week before Xerxes was reading Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy's Who the Hell is Pansy O'Hara?

The week before Xerxes was reading William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel

The week before Xerxes was reading Edward Gorey's Amphigorey: Fifteen Books

The week before Xerxes was reading Cornelius Plantinga's Not the Way It's Supposed to Be

The week before Xerxes was reading Mark Twain's A Cure for the Blues

The week before Xerxes was reading Herman Melville's Moby Dick

The week before Xerxes was reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy

The week before Xerxes was reading Frederick Buechner's Godric and The Alphabet of Grace

The week before 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