tales from the riverbank (‘to think that lillies so often grow out of the arses of corpses.’)

apparently predictive text has been rendering horsemouth's job as 'otter' for years (mind you one of his employers was often rendered 'the centre for the dead' allegedly). otter is probably a step forward over beachside donkey - they are sleek mobile creatures (though horsemouth is not looking forward to the fish diet).

horsemouth has survived another week and has bought some books as a reward (charity shop- sarf lun’un - four squid total).

firstly there’s a little pocket book, something by lesek kolakowski, freedom, fame, lying and betrayal (sadly not a ‘how-to’ manual). this horsemouth finds most trite and annoying and has taken to rendering quotations from it in the style of e.m. cioran, for example; ‘the total erosion of our mutual trust is (sadly not yet) an unlikely occurence.’ in it one can find tyranny (and her handmaiden anarchy) taking the waters. horsemouth thinks of it in terms of another quote whose provenance he has lost ‘to think that lillies so often grow out of the arses of corpses.’ (ok that’s a director friend of ingmar bergman reviewing another director’s efforts). once read horsemouth will chuck it in the ‘to-be-chucked’ pile.

his other acquisition is joe bageant’s deer hunting with jesus - a pre-financial crash account of class war in america (allegedly), it is in fact a kind of rednecks and gun-owners for beginners. it’s a fun lightweight read (the section on gun ownership may have shifted horsemouth’s position) but it needs harsher editing - the section where he takes at length against small-business owners reeks of small town hatreds, though the bit where he sees the few ‘successes’ lording it in neo-conservative propaganda over the ‘failures’ in the bar (and everybody accepting this as natural) sounds about right.

horsemouth has not lived in a small town for a long time - and this may be some sohn-rethel deep insight into how class domination in small town america works - or it may be just bitching. each section pulls its respective chapter off course and dilutes the impact of more interesting material that is more thinly described (attempts to resist illegal evictions, slum-landlords and alike). he points out that the mortgages on trailers -a devaluing asset - taken up by people with shocking credit histories due to a limited ability to earn given low wages (so high interest) are already sub-prime and are sure to be rinsed out later (as indeed they were).

this book is probably also not a keeper either - but it will probably go out as a gift.

horsemouth took up with bergman’s autobiography the magic lantern (or at least started dipping it) after watching liv ullman’s faithless (a fictionalisation of young ingmar’s bad behaviour). he has some more bergman somewhere he should give it a go.