At 17:39 09/28/98 -0400, I wrote: >> If it wouldn't be some sort of bizarre copyright violation, would anyone >> be interested in my posting some of the highlights from my reading? Well...I just hope I'm not breaking any huge laws or anything. If I am, uh, um, ah, oh well, they're out of business again, it was almost 30 years ago, and the copyright has probably expired anyway. The following are all passages quoted from the Winter 1970 issue of "The Phoenix". Note: There are two different periodicals called "The Phoenix" with quarterly distribution. One is the radical underground literary mag with two incarnations (each lasting less than five years) containing the Giles Weaver pieces. The other is a still-going Canadian journal of classical literature, and by classical, I mean Greek and Roman stuff from around the turn of, oh, the Common Era. ________________________________________________________________________ Page 172 - points to a Catcher-like aspiration and reincarnation "As I was walking back to Hamp last nite through dark Childs Park I had thoughts of this earth actually being purgatory and that after my death I wanted to come back here and work to help others get through the mill and find their true identities. I had, before those thoughts, some thoughts on reality that were so wild I began to come unhinged." ________________________________________________________________________ Page 172 - Interesting connection to Catcher and the Nine Stories "I had some fancy thoughts on this business of committing oneself to some cause of supposed value worthy of self-sacrifice." ________________________________________________________________________ Page 173 (?) - Very reminiscent of first few pages of Catcher. "But I am here failing to record my activity fo the past week. I falied early in the week because of a hearty sickness of recording my life, suspecting it very much as a stupid pastime." ________________________________________________________________________ Page 175 - Intriguing, considering recent events. Sounds like Maynard's own account of her break-up with JDS, from his side. "...her fundamental and basic self-esteem is horribly maimed, her emotional reaction of pain, anger and depression is the natural response to any threat of the slightest dilution of whatever sense of her own value she is able to keep scraped together. In her frenzied need to run me down she unavoidably robs authority from my regard for her great but thwarted capacities. When I am around her I must stop living in order to keep her from dying on me. Nevertheless I lost my patience this week and wrote her a hurtful letter." ________________________________________________________________________ Page 176-177 - It is pointless even to mention it. (: "...if I were alone then things are not important enough to worry about, but if an immanent action God were a reality, then there is hardly any cause to worry. Of course if there is a real life distressing factor then it is too much to expect any person not to worry some. But lacking a specific grievance one should live in a fair degree of psychic peace and not anticipate distress, provided one is so fortunate as to be free of compulsive morbidity." ________________________________________________________________________ Page 177 - Giles Weaver begins a LONG discussion of psychologists. "En garde! You self-proclaimed mind healers who devastate the soul!" ________________________________________________________________________ Page 178 - Continuing with psychologists... "Last I heard, medicine was an art. If medicine deals with the body and psychology deals with the mind, how is it that psychology fancies itself a SCIENCE? This frightens me. It appears to me as one of the outstanding symptoms of the human race plunging into madness. If medicine is respectable as an art, how is it that psychology is not supremely respectable as an art? Were psychology an art, how rich it would be. It would attract artists instead of plumbers. It would draw upon all wisdom without fear or favor. Science, philosophy, literature, religion, geography, geology, and Christmas stockings too, all would instruct psychology were it an art." ________________________________________________________________________ Page 180 - Yet more... "He [some ideal future psychologist] will, at the ripe moment of fashionable psychology, merely stand up on his hind legs and cry: 'FRAUD'. Then all hail will break loose. HAIL! Hail our savior, he has struck the chains from our minds." ________________________________________________________________________ Page 182 - Near the end of psychology discussion "...PERCEPTIVE CAPACITY. That is, how to have INSIGHT, not how to SHOW. So there they are, the sick green psych majors, unlimbering learned limericks on distressed men and women already victimized by the everyday insanities of our society." ________________________________________________________________________ Page 184 - This could have been Seymour's epitaph. "How the world loves to murder the aspirations of its children for the sake of trivial or even obscene values." ________________________________________________________________________ As I said at the outset, the copyrights on The Phoenix have probably expired by now anyway, and I haven't heard about any Giles Weaver renewing them. At any rate, this isn't even 10% of the Winter 1970 submission, much less the two later submissions in the next two issues of the Phoenix. (They serialized the material into three roughly equal subsets.) All of this material apparently arrived at the Phoenix's editor's desk in large envelopes, with a letter explaining a complex page-numbering system for the log books (from which these quotes were lifted) and strict instructions that nothing could be altered about the pieces except the title, because it had no title until the Phoenix supplied theirs. Something like "Further Notes from the Underground." The notes I have supplied next to the page numbers are brief summaries, sometimes mentioning a possible connection between Giles Weaver and JDS. As Stephen Foskett's site points out, The Phoenix should be available in any really really good library. College libraries, with their huge periodicals sections, would be the best bet. Any feedback from these quotes or from further reading in other parts of the Giles Weaver pieces would be appreciated. And if this really is illegal after all, don't cry about it, for God's sake don't sue me, just delete the silly message and get on with life. ________________________________________________________ G.H.G.A.Paterson (804)662-3737 gpaterso@richmond.edu ________________________________________________________