When you’re an arrogant prick for no good reason and you know it, but don’t seem to be able to do anything about it, read ‘My Antonia’ about a little girl who grew up without knowing just how special she really was.
I wrote the beginnings of a scientific article about why I am convinced that there was no big bang, no expansion of the universe, no dark matter, nor dark energy sufficient to have caused expansion to accelerate. I thought maybe I could have Ralph read the first part of it to you all, so I asked Kay if she would read it aloud to me and tell me what she thought of it. I thought it sounded fine myself, but she looked around awkwardly before asking whether I thought you all would understand it. So I nixed it temporarily but later thought that redshift caused by the hydrogenous plasma that is 99.9 % of the visible matter in the universe was a considerably less crazy explanation than what all of you probably accept as the ‘scientific’ explanation of the universe. I decided I would append such a statement to the front of it and go ahead. I particularly liked my wording in:
“I intend to show that forward scattering of light through denser plasma at the centers of galaxy clusters, with a cumulative effect on increasingly distant regions of the visible universe, can more accurately account for the observed redshift by very well-understood plasma phenomena without introduction of the deus tenebrosus machinae. Avoiding that darkness is why I’m doing this.”
I went so far as to ask Ralph to practice his pronunciation of my darker version of the latin deus ex machinae. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how inappropriate that topic would be for this group.
So, since lately I’d been thinking of starting a new novel but wanted to attempt something more subtle than my usual stock and trade. The excellent novel, ‘My Antonia’ by Wendel Berry came to mind. The very day I was thinking about that, a clue on a ‘down’ word of my daily crossword puzzles asked for the last name of the Willa who wrote ‘My Antonia’. I stared at the clue, sure Wendel Berry had written it. I went upstairs to our library to search for the book. I found eighteen Dick Francis novels, ten or more of Joseph Conrad, a few by D. H. Lawrence, some favorite Saul Bellows, Carson McCullers, etc. but I didn’t find my copy of ‘My Antonia’. I probably loaned it to someone who threw it away. So I checked on the internet. And sure enough, Willa Cathers! There was a free pdf of the book, so I downloaded it and began to read. It is awesome! So let’s have Ralph apply his voice to an excerpt at the end of the introduction:
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“…During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa [by train headed for Nebraska], our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had known long ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name was to call up pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one’s brain. I had lost sight of her altogether, but Jim had found her again after long years, had renewed a friendship that meant a great deal to him, and out of his busy life had set apart time enough to enjoy that friendship. His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her.
“’I can’t see,’ he said impetuously, ‘why you have never written anything about Ántonia.’”
“I told him I had always felt that other people—he himself, for one knew her much better than I. I was ready, however, to make an agreement with him; I would set down on paper all that I remembered of Ántonia if he would do the same. We might, in this way, get a picture of her.
“He rumpled his hair with a quick, excited gesture, which with him often announces a new determination, and I could see that my suggestion took hold of him. ‘Maybe I will, maybe I will!’ he declared. He stared out of the window for a few moments, and when he turned to me again his eyes had the sudden clearness that comes from something the mind itself sees. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I should have to do it in a direct way, and say a great deal about myself. It’s through myself that I knew and felt her, and I’ve had no practice in any other form of presentation.’
“I told him that how he knew her and felt her was exactly what I most wanted to know about Ántonia. He had had opportunities that I, as a little girl who watched her come and go, had not.
“Months afterward Jim Burden arrived at my apartment one stormy winter afternoon, with a bulging legal portfolio sheltered under his fur overcoat. He brought it into the sitting-room with him and tapped it with some pride as he stood warming his hands.
“’I finished it last night—the thing about Ántonia,’ he said. ‘Now, what about yours?’
I had to confess that mine had not gone beyond a few straggling notes.
“’Notes? I didn’t make any.’ He drank his tea all at once and put down the cup. ‘I didn’t arrange or rearrange. I simply wrote down what of herself and myself and other people Ántonia’s name recalls to me. I suppose it hasn’t any form. It hasn’t any title, either.’ He went into the next room, sat down at my desk and wrote on the pinkish face of the portfolio the word, ‘Ántonia.’ He frowned at this a moment, then prefixed another word, making it ‘My Ántonia.’ That seemed to satisfy him.
“’Read it as soon as you can,’ he said, rising, ‘but don’t let it influence your own story.’
“My own story was never written, but the following narrative is Jim’s manuscript, substantially as he brought it to me.
“NOTE: The Bohemian name Ántonia is strongly accented on the first syllable, like the English name Anthony, and the ‘i’ is, of course, given the sound of long ‘e’. The name is pronounced An’-ton-ee-ah.”
—
You slam the door of the confessional and walk away.
That night you dream Kay won three races today.
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