A Month Of Sundays - Opening

1

Forgive me my denomination and my town; I am a Christian minister, and an American. I write these pages at some point in the time of Richard Nixon's unravelling. Though the yielding is mine, the temptation belongs to others: my keepers have set before me a sheaf of blank sheets -- a month's worth, in their estimation. Sullying them is to be my sole therapy.

my tongue is the pen of a ready writer

-- PSALM 45

This principle of soul, universally and individually, is the principle of ambiguity.

-- PAUL TILLICH

Sale of the book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

A Fawcett Columbine Book
Published by Ballantine Books

Copyright 1974, 1975 by John Updike

This edition is published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincide3ntal.

An excerpt from this book originally appeared in Playboy magazine.

Manufactured in the United States of America

This Week

• French C40: End
• Descartes
• Dante: Fin
• SS1: D3, SS2, Sketch+D1

Oblivion: Mr. Squishy

Or maybe that even the mere possibility of expressing any of this childish heartbreak to someone else seemed impossible except in the context of the mystery of true marriage, meaning not just a ceremony and financial merger but a true communion of souls, and Schmidt now lately felt he was coming to understand why the Church all through his childhoos catechism and pre-Con referred to it as the Holy Sacrament of Marriage, for it seemed every bit as miraculous and transrational and remote from the possibilities of actual lived life as the crucifixion and resurrection and transubstantation did, which is to say it appeared not as a goal to expect ever to really reach or achieve but as a kind of navigational star, as in in the sky, something high and untouchable and miraculously beautiful in the sort of distant way that reminded you always how ordinary and unbeautiful and incapable of miracles you your own self were, which was another reason why Schmidt had stopped looking at the sky or going out at night or even usually ever opening the lightproof curtains of his condominium's picture window when he got home at night and instead sat with his satellite TV's channel changer in his left hand switching rapidly from channel to channel out of fear that something better was going to come on suddenly on another of the cable provider's 220 regular and premium channels and that he was about to miss it, spending three nightly hours this way before it was time to stare with drumming heart at the telephone wholly unbeknownst to her had Darlene Lilley's home number on Speed Dial so that it would take only one moment of the courage to risk looking prurient or creepy to use just one finger to push just one gray button to invite her for one cocktail or even just a soft drink over which he could take off his public mask and open his heart to her before quailing and deferring the call one more night and waddling into the bathroom and/or then the cream-and-tan bedroom to lay out the next day's crisp shirt and tie and say his nightly dekate and then masturbate himself to sleep once more.

This Week

• French C40: End
• Descartes
• Dante: Fin
• SS1: D3, SS2, Sketch+D1
  

Home-thoughts, from the Sea

NOBLY, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-east distance dawn’d Gibraltar grand and gray;
‘Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?’—say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

The Cantos: V

Topaz I manage, and three sorts of blue;
but on the barb of time.
The fire? always, and the vision always,
Ear dull, perhaps, with the vision, flitting
And fading at will. Weaving with points of gold,
Gold-yellow, saffron... The roman shoe, Aurunculeia'a

barb of time: Perhaps an allusion to Giordano Bruno's motto vincit instans ("the instant triumphs"), of which Bruno says that the creative instant or inspiration is a barb of light which pierces the mind to give one a totally new perception beyond all mere logic chopping. This links up with Pound's notions regarding the "luminous detail" -- Companion

This Week

• French C34
• SS D3
• Inferno FIN
• DESCARTES

Silk - Soie

Love, my folded readers, love as a carefully folded letter.

Distant Star - Closing

A taxi pulled up beside us. Look after yourself, my friend, he said, and off he went.

Distant Star - pg. 130

This is my last communique from the planet of the monsters/ Never again will I immerse myself in literature's bottomless cesspools. I will go back to writing my poems, such as they are, find a job to keep body and soul together, and make no attempt to be published.

This Week

• French C29
• SS D2
• Descartes
• Inferno Fin
• Cantos EP