MacksNotes III
I found this stuff laying around in my computer (I mean it really was laying, like in "laying eggs") and decided to publish it perhaps because my brain was lobotomized during my so-called vacation in Curacao (which is one fucking warm place) as well as by some gift Percocets thus leaving me unable to write with my usual intense absence of coherence and surfeit of venom. So anyway, here are some more short takes to help the lazy and ignorant achieve disastrous scores on high school and college lit exams.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A Russian dropout burdened with the family name Raskolnikov, murders an unpleasant old lady for kicks or out of boredom or because he’s depressed or something. After an ungodly number of pages he is caught and is given a one-way ticket to Siberia leading to his spiritual redemption if not the spiritual redemption of the unpleasant old lady. The book is extremely long and tedious mostly because Dostoyevsky needed to stretch the story out to fulfill his obligations to the magazine that was publishing it in installments and thus stave off starvation. As I recall, Raskolnikov had a girlfriend with torn underwear or dirty underwear or something or other involving underwear. Correct me if I’m wrong in any of this — I read this book many years ago for reasons I don’t remember and probably have screwed things up.
Frankenstein by Boris Karloff
With weirdo hunchback Fritz assisting him, a young scientist named Frankenstein rips off an assortment of spare body parts and proceeds to turkey-stitch and rivet them into a eight-foot tall Rosie O'Donnell-like structure with a head resembling a tumescent Jimmy Carter. Then, as if this wasn’t enough, Frank employs an assemblage of snazzy Hollywood contraptions along with a lightning bolt to bring his mooncalf to life. The resulting oversize hodgepodge, rather than embark on a lucrative career as linebacker with the Chicago Bears, clomps off into the countryside where it causes a great deal of damage. Justifiably irked, the townsfolk form a mob to hunt it down and kill it. All this bullshit takes place amidst darkness and gloom and artificial fog made by stagehands spritzing water onto lumps of dry ice. Don’t ask me if any of this crap has anything to do with the book by Mary Shelley because I haven’t read it.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Huck escapes from his brutal, low-life, drunkard father as well as a pair of prissy aunts who are trying to make him into a little gentleman in the antebellum South. He's joined by runaway slave Jim. The two float down the Mississippi on a raft having adventures and meeting odd characters along the way. Eventually the author gets tired of writing the book, especially with all the different accents and jargon he’s stuck himself with, and has Tom Sawyer show up to ruin what was beginning to look like a damn fine novel.
Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
This dismal little novel recounts the unpleasant story of a wealthy old German asshole who gets the hots for a prototypical Nabokov-type underage trollop. After being kicked out of the family fold by his wife and setting up shop with the trollop, the German’s newly established non-domestic bliss is interrupted by the appearance of a sadistic plump-lipped male gold-digger named Axel Rex (who reminds me of mean kid I knew in grade school named Arthur Kaledin). Arthur, I mean Axel, starts making it hot and heavy with the trollop behind the wealthy German’s back. The old boy, who’s none too bright, finally catches on that he’s being cuckolded and for no particular reason zooms off in a car with the girl, crashes, and goes blind. The girl wheedles herself back into the old boy’s good graces (what a dweeb) allowing her and Axel to while away the hours in their birthday suits tormenting the blind German and depleting his bank account. Eventually the sap’s brother happens upon the scene and breaks things up. Now really pissed off, the old guy decides to shoot the girl, but she nails him first teaching us this important lesson — blind cuckolds should not attempt to shoot sexy young sadists. Nabokov went on to write even sicker stuff, like Bend Sinister and Lolita. I guess he had a thing for teenage chicks, but hell, who doesn’t?
Golden Boy by (more or less) Clifford Odets
A nice young white guy (Bill Holden) gives up the violin to make big bucks as a prize fighter. On his way toward the title, he knocks out a nice young black guy (the term "African American" hadn’t been coined yet and enacted into law) who fights under the sobriquet Chocolate Drop. The black guy proceeds to die. Filled with remorse and with the audience awash in a sea of tears, Holden abandons his pugilistic career and goes back to the violin despite the calluses on his hands. It’s a damn shame that a nice young black kid had to die just so Bill Holden could become a concert violinist, but that’s the way the cookie used to crumble in those days. Barbara Stanwyk helps fuck things up throughout.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A snarky young British lager lout sadist is taken into custody amidst a cloudburst of indecipherable neologisms after he and his buddies indulge in some boyish pranks involving burglary, torture, rape, and murder. Rather than hang him from the nearest lamppost, the UK authorities, no doubt influenced by Rob Reiner, Tim Robbins, and the ACLU, spend a lot of time, effort, and taxpayer money brainwashing him into becoming a good citizen. The washing fails (like, what a surprise) resulting in the uplifting message that an English boy’s spirit, no matter how vicious, amoral, depraved, and bestial, cannot be expunged by scrubbing his brain with OxiClean. Beethoven’s music plays a role in the whole affair, but I forget how or why and besides I don’t think it matters much one way or the other.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A Russian dropout burdened with the family name Raskolnikov, murders an unpleasant old lady for kicks or out of boredom or because he’s depressed or something. After an ungodly number of pages he is caught and is given a one-way ticket to Siberia leading to his spiritual redemption if not the spiritual redemption of the unpleasant old lady. The book is extremely long and tedious mostly because Dostoyevsky needed to stretch the story out to fulfill his obligations to the magazine that was publishing it in installments and thus stave off starvation. As I recall, Raskolnikov had a girlfriend with torn underwear or dirty underwear or something or other involving underwear. Correct me if I’m wrong in any of this — I read this book many years ago for reasons I don’t remember and probably have screwed things up.
Frankenstein by Boris Karloff
With weirdo hunchback Fritz assisting him, a young scientist named Frankenstein rips off an assortment of spare body parts and proceeds to turkey-stitch and rivet them into a eight-foot tall Rosie O'Donnell-like structure with a head resembling a tumescent Jimmy Carter. Then, as if this wasn’t enough, Frank employs an assemblage of snazzy Hollywood contraptions along with a lightning bolt to bring his mooncalf to life. The resulting oversize hodgepodge, rather than embark on a lucrative career as linebacker with the Chicago Bears, clomps off into the countryside where it causes a great deal of damage. Justifiably irked, the townsfolk form a mob to hunt it down and kill it. All this bullshit takes place amidst darkness and gloom and artificial fog made by stagehands spritzing water onto lumps of dry ice. Don’t ask me if any of this crap has anything to do with the book by Mary Shelley because I haven’t read it.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Huck escapes from his brutal, low-life, drunkard father as well as a pair of prissy aunts who are trying to make him into a little gentleman in the antebellum South. He's joined by runaway slave Jim. The two float down the Mississippi on a raft having adventures and meeting odd characters along the way. Eventually the author gets tired of writing the book, especially with all the different accents and jargon he’s stuck himself with, and has Tom Sawyer show up to ruin what was beginning to look like a damn fine novel.
Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
This dismal little novel recounts the unpleasant story of a wealthy old German asshole who gets the hots for a prototypical Nabokov-type underage trollop. After being kicked out of the family fold by his wife and setting up shop with the trollop, the German’s newly established non-domestic bliss is interrupted by the appearance of a sadistic plump-lipped male gold-digger named Axel Rex (who reminds me of mean kid I knew in grade school named Arthur Kaledin). Arthur, I mean Axel, starts making it hot and heavy with the trollop behind the wealthy German’s back. The old boy, who’s none too bright, finally catches on that he’s being cuckolded and for no particular reason zooms off in a car with the girl, crashes, and goes blind. The girl wheedles herself back into the old boy’s good graces (what a dweeb) allowing her and Axel to while away the hours in their birthday suits tormenting the blind German and depleting his bank account. Eventually the sap’s brother happens upon the scene and breaks things up. Now really pissed off, the old guy decides to shoot the girl, but she nails him first teaching us this important lesson — blind cuckolds should not attempt to shoot sexy young sadists. Nabokov went on to write even sicker stuff, like Bend Sinister and Lolita. I guess he had a thing for teenage chicks, but hell, who doesn’t?
Golden Boy by (more or less) Clifford Odets
A nice young white guy (Bill Holden) gives up the violin to make big bucks as a prize fighter. On his way toward the title, he knocks out a nice young black guy (the term "African American" hadn’t been coined yet and enacted into law) who fights under the sobriquet Chocolate Drop. The black guy proceeds to die. Filled with remorse and with the audience awash in a sea of tears, Holden abandons his pugilistic career and goes back to the violin despite the calluses on his hands. It’s a damn shame that a nice young black kid had to die just so Bill Holden could become a concert violinist, but that’s the way the cookie used to crumble in those days. Barbara Stanwyk helps fuck things up throughout.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A snarky young British lager lout sadist is taken into custody amidst a cloudburst of indecipherable neologisms after he and his buddies indulge in some boyish pranks involving burglary, torture, rape, and murder. Rather than hang him from the nearest lamppost, the UK authorities, no doubt influenced by Rob Reiner, Tim Robbins, and the ACLU, spend a lot of time, effort, and taxpayer money brainwashing him into becoming a good citizen. The washing fails (like, what a surprise) resulting in the uplifting message that an English boy’s spirit, no matter how vicious, amoral, depraved, and bestial, cannot be expunged by scrubbing his brain with OxiClean. Beethoven’s music plays a role in the whole affair, but I forget how or why and besides I don’t think it matters much one way or the other.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
Posted by dome of glass at 4/25/2010 11:54 AM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Frankenstein Dostoyevsky Nabokov
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Frankenstein Dostoyevsky Nabokov
Comments