Just a few more weeks of 1967 (and 2019)! I hope As I have said, if you’re running behind, no worries. You can always go back to the old posts and comment there. We will all love it!
Here is the post for any and all discussions about passages from December 18 – 24, 1967.
For the main page of this read-along, please go here.
And into Part Two! Feels like an accomplishment.
Bit late with this, but here goes. Dec. 21: story about alleged attack on US destroyers by N. Vietnamese ships is queried as to its veracity – might have been invented to justify military action: ‘At the time it was all considered true and sufficed to authorise the president to take the foreign war seriously.’ ‘-A President can’t lie: Marie says: He’d always get caught!’ In the Dec. 22 entry: ‘[Marie] has been living here six years. She doesn’t want to live anywhere else. She doesn’t want to live in a country she can’t trust. She trusts this one…[later she said] You’re saying that when a president’s lie comes out, it’s too late for us, and late enough for him? She can look like such a little sophist sometimes…She has added a second answer to her first one, and neither one’s shocked her in the least.’
Such a lot going on here. Marie shows extraordinary astuteness, sophistication (as well as sophistry) and intelligence – probably filtered through the consciousness of Gesine? Sadly pertinent points still today…
I often read Dec 21 at readings — as you say, a lot going on, but at the start of v2 Johnson is quasi reintroducing the main characters and themes (Gesine, Marie, D.E., Times, bank) so it’s accessible. Plus “A president can’t lie!” is a real laugh line these days.
I often read Dec 21 at readings — as you say, a lot going on, but at the start of v2 Johnson is quasi reintroducing the main characters and themes (Gesine, Marie, D.E., Times) so it’s accessible. Plus “A president can’t lie!” is a real laugh line these days.
What would she say when Nixon gets in? ( a little too late for Anniversaries).