At the moment, these lines really speak to me, because…
“…God is not always in his Heaven, all is not always right with the world. It is not all bad, but it is not all good, it is not all ugly, but it is not all beautiful, it is life, life, life — the only thing that matters. It is savage, cruel, kind, noble, passionate, selfish, generous, stupid, ugly, beautiful, painful, joyous — it is all these, and more, and it’s all these I want to know … and I will put it on paper, and make it true and beautiful.
…
[but] When I speak of beauty I do not mean a movie close-up where Susie and Johnnie meet at the end and clinch and all the gum-chewing ladies go home thinking husband is not so good a lover as Valentino. That’s cheap and vulgar. I mean everything which is lovely, and noble, and true. It does not have to be sweet, it may be bitter, it does not have to be joyous, it may be sad.”
… in my (finished!) second novel (has an offer!), the anti-hero begins the story by telling the anti-heroine, “All tragedy is erotic. The things that make you laugh don’t make you hard, or wet.”
It’s sort of a terrible moral. But I think it leads into an amazing–and very, very different–kind of story. I’ll tell you more about it in a bit. At the moment, I’m a little distracted with another new idea. And, still, Sylvia Plath and Hafez.
mjc
m jane colette 