K2

Here’s an interesting cover of the obscure Bob Dylan song from whence Brian Jobe got the title of his novel, Bird’s Nest in Your Hair .

It’s been awhile since I’ve held a paperback that exudes this particular mid-1960s bouquet.  The last one I can recall that gave off this distinctive compact pulpish effervescence was my first copy of The Last Gentleman , published in 1966 and purchased by me in a used bookstore in Walla Walla, WA in 1986.  There was a near-pornographic image of a woman doing some sort of postmodern dance of the seven veils on the cover and in the air the smell of acidic pages destined to crumble as the 20th Century unwound. Now I turn to McLuhan for help in healing that wound Percy put his finger on, or at least in furthering the diagnosis.

…someone oughtta sell tickets. A Frenchman – a Frenchman! A citizen of the country that gave you the terms rendezvous, menage a trois , and cherchez la femme – charged onto the court of the French Open in protest of that country’s legalization of same-sex marriage. Scrawled on his belly? KIDS’ RIGHTS.

…or at least, follows Pope Francis up to the gates and peeks inside. Hendrik Hertzberg is willing to give the Pope the benefit of the doubt. That’s good. What’s remarkable to me is how much attention the modern world pays to this barely-living relic at the head of a dying institution. I mean, American Catholicism is pretty well assimilated, right? Why do people still notice this celibate white male who dares to wear white as he presides over a vast network of sexual abusers, along with the few backward dupes who still think God not only exists, but cares about who we know in the Biblical sense.

publication delayed

So momentarily — ha! — I was listening to Anthony Blanche’s sly complaint, 60 years after the event, that Sebastian Flyte had stolen the narrator Charles Ryder from him. Oh, my. [Via The Awl .]

… the medium gets the content it deserves …