Blind Willie (Gobless us every one)

[JackTheRipper]

Wonderful. I sometimes wonder what the original (the version in this collection is "very different" according to Steve) looked like. Maybe there weren't as many connections to Low Men as there are in this one. Speaking of, I enjoyed Willie writing in his ledger, attempting to redeem for what he, Harry, and Richie did to Carol :down:

What are your thoughts on this story?

[Mr Nobody]

First time I read HIA, I got to 'gobless' and got stuck with laughing like a drain. It's a British slang thing. 'Gobless' would be 'without a gob (mouth)' and I had this mental image of people running round 'gobless'. Though obviously I got what it actually meant, too.

[Bluey Lunger]

i'm going thru this book again. saw a hc copy of it on a customer's bookshelf yesterday, wanted to go over the look at titles, but didn't. sk's new story, udt, has some kind of allusion to armies of the night, something from alexander pope, something from mailer's armies of the night, about the '67 occupation of the pentagon. this collection is a different take on the same time period and i'm curious to see how it connects to udt.

but in this one, blind willie, i like the use of "bewildered" to describe bill who "sits up in bed to the sound of music...and i like the use of "werewolfy" to describe the final transformation, from willie shearman to blind willie garfield.

pennants. to do w/the book as a whole, as well, and maybe pennants describes what others do throughout the book, same goes for the '67 pentagon march, pennants, all that existential guilt working through the mind, creating swiss cheese of memory, of what is and what was and what should be...

[Bluey Lunger]

this :arrow:….there’s that scene w/ralph, toward the end of the story..willie tells ralph he will probably take a few days off after christmas….he’s thinking about jasper the police-smurf and god and slocum…although I dunno if his thoughts have arrived at slocum as a way to deal w/jasper the police-smurf, as yet…and ralph asks him, “go south?…”
“south?”…willie looks startled, then laughs….goin south…a slang expression, akin to goin nuclear, lost it, snapped…and I dunno if that is intentional, but it is a nice unstated…something…bool, or something…robert mccammon has a story, gone south (1992)…’bout dan lambert, who did his time in the nam, and has gone south. much of what is enjoyable about hia/blind willie is what is unstated.

…there’s some ideas expressed in blind willie that connect to under the dome…blind willie thinks about the good thief, from the story of jesus…Friday afternoon you’re bleeding on golgotha’s stony hill;Friday night you’re having tea and crumpets with the King…willie thinks he stands for all those who can only stand in the shadows, watching while the damage is done….a recurring theme in hia…doesn’t he beg for them?…the baseball glove…and now they put their money in it as he stands eyeless outside the cathedral…he begs for them...willie begs god...figures god is on his side...shrugs shoulder, never dislocated.


has stuff about under the dome, connections between hearts in atlantis (blind willie) and udt...