Still my favourite t-shirt..

Adam Phillips, on Philip Roth, on betrayal..

A striking paragraph from ‘On Flirtation’.. (yeah, I know, it’s not exactly lolcat central around here these days… )

“..Roth has certainly been suggesting in his recent books that what people think they can say that will betray their partner – or their family, or friends – reveals something about the imaginary crime they are committing together (or wish they were committing). Deception, I think, was greatly underrated, partly because of its minimalism, at least by Roth’s standards, but also because he was on to something so discomforting: that one way we get to know people is by betraying them, and that we can suffer most as adults from not being able to let people down. And one lets people down – or ‘deceives’ them – when one refuses to be only one version of oneself. Consistency is compliance. So when people are alone in Roth’s novels – or with people who don’t know them – they come to a certain kind of life: as though fidelity, particularly to oneself, constrains the repertoire… We may regularly be asked to protect people’s favourite versions of themselves, but we don’t always have to agree…”

Jacques Derrida on Echo and Narcissus..

Bit of a Sarko-inspired French theme around here today..

 

If you will bend, and tell me that you love me..

Oh Danny Boy the pipes, the pipes are calling
from glen to glen and down the mountain side
The summer’s gone and all the roses dying
’tis you ’tis you must go and I must bide
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow
or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow
‘Tis I’ll be there in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny Boy, Oh Danny Boy I love you so

And when ye come, and all the flowers are dying
If I am dead, as dead I well may be
You’ll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an Ave there for me

And I shall hear, tho’ soft you tread above me
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be
If you will bend, and tell me that you love me
Then I shall sleep in peace until you come to me