Weil on the Iliad; Nazis everywhere; the scholar, pt. 4; a dialog of trucks

I discussed, with fellow readers, Simone Weil’s essay “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force,” which we all were impressed with.

(Weil gets some details about the Iliad wrong, per the introduction in this edition.)

We also learned about this new book: Our Nazi.

Nazis, Nazis everywhere is the virtual life-refrain of one of our venerable reading-group members.

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Rough school day for Samuel, who heard some unsettling noises. He doesn’t want to go back.

Karin bought him some Hot Wheels, out of pity.

Later, she heard him playing with other toy cars – a pickup truck and a food truck.

“Hey, man, give me some sliders.”

“Sure, man. Where do you want them?”

“Just toss ’em in the back of my truck.”

The scholar

Samuel’ll endure his first school day tomorrow. Tonight he is being supplied, bathed, dressed, taught to put on new shoes, made to sleep earlier, etc. His backpack is so large and full, he barely can carry it and keep his balance.

What’ll I do at home all day with just Daniel?

Karin disabused me of this worry. I was shocked to learn that Samuel’s classes would end by 10:30. “Just early enough for the students to grab McDonald’s breakfast,” Karin noted.

Samuel’ll be driven to school tomorrow. Soon – we hope – the South Bend schools will assign him to a bus route.

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With David, I have joined a book club. Its reading list is prodding me to brush up on my Homer and my William James.

Apart from this, I’ve finished Forster’s Howards End and moved on to his stories in The Celestial Omnibus; I’ve followed the Ingallses from Wisconsin to Indian Territory and now to Minnesota, where they’re living in a hole in the ground; and I’ve reached, in Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time, a cleverly titled but labored instalment, Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant (which Evelyn Waugh disparaged, his initial enthusiasm for the series having dwindled). The narrator has spent several books detailing his acquaintances’ love mishaps. It’s some relief to think that the Blitz can’t be far off: always picturesque, the Blitz.

Picturesque, also, are the killings in the Iliad, but their sheer numerousness makes the poem tedious.