Better Than Friday - 99 (Patreon)

Good afternoon ya'll, hope you're doing well. Thanks for your continued support. 

Have a great weekend, and hope you're staying cool wherever you are, I experienced 116 degrees here in Washington last week. 

I wish that on nobody. 

1. Leon Bloy - A strange "French Decadent" I'm looking forward to reading 

Good lord look at those blurbs! Kafka and Flannery O'Connor? 

Admired by Borges?? Wow.

I need to read more J.K. Huysmans as well, I really need to do a proper review of the magnificent Against Nature. 

Thirty tales of theft, onanism, incest, murder, and a host of other forms of perversion and cruelty from the “ungrateful beggar” and “pilgrim of the absolute,” Léon Bloy. Disagreeable Tales, first published in French in 1894, collects Bloy’s narrative sermons from the depths: a cauldron of frightful anecdotes and inspired misanthropy that represents a high point of the French Decadent movement and the most emblematic entry into the library of the “Cruel Tale” christened by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Whether depicting parents and offspring being sacrificed for selfish gains, or imbeciles sacrificing their own individuality on a literary whim, these tales all draw sustenance from an underlying belief: the root of religion is crime against man, nature and God, and that in this hell on earth, even the worst among us has a soul.

A close friend to Joris-Karl Huysmans, and later admired by the likes of Kafka and Borges, Léon Bloy (1846–1917) is among the best known but least translated of the French Decadent writers. Nourishing antireligious sentiments in his youth, his outlook changed radically when he moved to Paris and came under the influence of Barbey d’Aurevilly, the unconventionally religious novelist best known for Les Diaboliques. He earned the dual nicknames of “The Pilgrim of the Absolute” through his unorthodox devotion to the Catholic Church, and “The Ungrateful Beggar” through his endless reliance on the charity of friends to support him and his family.

“His fire is nurtured by the dung-heap of modern times.”—Franz Kafka

“Bloy has come my way... He is an iceberg hurled at me to break up my Titanic and I hope my Titanic will be smashed.”—Flannery O'Connor

“Léon Bloy is a cathedral gargoyle who pours the waters of heaven down on the good and on the wicked.”—Barbey d'Aurevilly

- Wakefield Press site 

2. One of the greatest rock songs ever written 

The Dolls were amazing. Love this track. 

3. Dance of Death woodblocks by Hans Holbein 

The poet Tim Grayson told me about these, thanks man - Terrific. 

The Dance of Death by the German artist Hans Holbein (1497–1543) is a great, grim triumph of Renaissance woodblock printing. In a series of action-packed scenes Death intrudes on the everyday lives of thirty-four people from various levels of society — from pope to physician to ploughman. 

- From the website linked

4. Reread the Same 100 Books 

While I'm extremely interested in reading broadly, I find this to be great advice. 

I think I'll try to reread my favorites as much as I can in the years to come. 

5. Boaty McBoatface 

I'm late to this, but I find it hysterical that the internet voted to name a £200 million boat "Boaty McBoatface"

That's "Saddle Mountain" in the background there, an excellent hike if anybody is ever in the Oregon coast area.