"And Ajax by mad passion borne stern had replied, fierce scorn enhancing scorn to fell extremes…"
This is the picture the school newspaper, The Eagle Eyrie, published on its front page the edition after I got hauled out of Senior Prom by my father for puking tequila in the toilet at the supposedly “dry” after prom party held at the Dominion Power headquarters in Innsbrook.
I was already pretty toasted at this point.
Pope and my college girlfriend.
Everyone seems to remember his sweater.
From FB:
“Grave of American author Thomas Wolfe, who wrote “Look Homeward Angel” (which I have yet to read but should…)”
“Writers have less of a hard time with movies about writers, because the act of writing is something that’s somewhat pointless to depict visually, so you kind of can’t go wrong. But there’s also a kind of inherent futility in using a visual medium to convey the interior machinations of the creative act. It’s helpful, then, in concocting movies about writers, to choose or create writers who are oversized personalities, men and women who do a lot more than spend time hunched over a desk wrestling with their own thoughts. The movie “Genius,” directed by Michael Grandage from a script by John Logan, does not lack for those. The central figure, though, is not a writer but an editor, the real-life Maxwell Perkins, a man whose most pronounced eccentricity, it seems, involved almost never taking his hat off. “Genius” is the story of book man Perkins, friend and collaborator to the likes of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who play significant roles here, and the way Perkins took on and tamed the fiery poetic work of North-Carolina-born visionary (or blowhard, depending on which literary critic you consult) Thomas Wolfe.“
LINK
From FB:
“Here’s the grave of Captain Goldman Bryson, whom my GGGF Cam Taylor is alleged to have killed. Just to prove that one family’s hero is another family’s villain, I found a very good web page that noted that Bryson farmed the area at Six Mile inside the Monroe County (NC) border near Cherokee, NC. In order to avoid conscription into the North Carolina Confederate Home Guard, he slipped off into the mountains and became a leader of other “outliers” at the age of 44. Bryson and his band of men were known to Confederate sympathizers as bushwhackers and bandits. To those with Union loyalties, he was addressed with respect as “Captain”. At the age of 46, he was apparently killed by my GGGF. A Confederate inspection report from 1864 regarding the Confederate general’s troops under whom my GGGF served noted that they were little more than a, “…band of marauders.” I found this on the Find A Grave site regarding his murder: “During the Civil War, Confederate General John Crawford Vaughn with 100 men tracked Captain Goldman Bryson’s newly enlisted Union Company through Tellico and Coker Creek on the Unicoi Turnpike. Vaughn had orders from Union General Braxton Bragg to track down and destroy Bryson’s Company. On Oct. 27, 1863 Vaughn caught and attacked Bryson’s unit at Evan’s Mill on Beaver Dam Creek, about 10 miles from Murphy. Two of Bryson’s men were killed there and 17 were captured. On the way back to Tellico some of the 17 were murdered in cold blood and their bodies were left along the trail. Most of the rest were shot near the base of the mountain on Tellico River, near the house of Dr. Hall. Bryson escaped back to Six Mile on Coker Creek but was trailed and killed there. Bryson’s muster roll of his union men was taken from his body. The list of names was later used after the war by Thomas Boyd, Vaughn’s brother-in-law and Regimental Adjutant from Mount Vernon, and Vaughn to defraud the Federal government out of more than $100,000 on fraudulent claims in the name of the men that Vaughn had killed.”
From FB:
“Second in command to Glanton was a Texan – Judge Holden. In describing him, Chamberlain claimed, ‘a cooler blooded villain never went unhung.’
Holden was well over six feet, ‘had a fleshy frame, [and] a dull tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression’ and was well educated in geology and mineralogy, fluent in native dialects, a good musician, and ‘plum centre’ with a firearm.
Chamberlain saw him also as a coward who would avoid equal combat if possible but would not hesitate to kill Indians or Mexicans if he had the advantage.
Rumors also abounded about atrocities committed in Texas and the Cherokee nation by him under a different name.
Before the gang left Fronteras, Chamberlain claims that a ten year old girl was found ‘foully violated and murdered’ with ‘the mark of a large hand on her throat,’ but no one ever directly accused Holden…”
From FB:
“Always remember the villain believes he is the hero of his own story…”
LINK
This is a later picture of that same room – probably taken when I was home from VT.
In that intervening time period, I’d become more obsessed with “The Lost Boys” and especially The Cult.
In the bottom left you’ll see a bookshelf constructed of a 2″x8″ board and two stereo speakers to an old record player I bought for $10 at a garage sale in Pennsylvania. Below that is the pillow to my bed, which was just a double mattress on the floor. No box spring. No frame.
To the right above the red lamp is an an advertisement I pulled out of a magazine for Yamaha guitars. I always remembered what it said:
“While the others partied, you practiced.
Now it’s your turn to play.”
Song Of Ajax 