THE CHAMELEON

Daemonic Rise  19 November 2017

Dear Jerome K. Jeremiah

Thanks for sharing, buddy. Your being such a dab hand at the fiddle-de-dee—it was fun to see you straining so earnestly for the biblical. You almost made it, too. It makes me regret having tossed overboard, after a dozen pages, your gigglesome little tale, "Three Jeromes in a Jalopy" or whatever it was. Perhaps if I'd persevered, really bit down on the rictus of a painfully inverted smile, I might have reached the promised land of garbage and offal.

Jolly decent of you to allow the gents down at the club to indulge in a quiet inclination or two. The working class boys, hopefully, with the true fear of Jerome before their eyes, will get back in the chimneys where they belong.

It's been so long since I stubbed my funny bone on your twee tosh, I'd almost forgotten what the middle initial "K" stood for. Thanks for so forcefully reminding me.

Wishing you may always remain the true K. that you are
Daemonic Rise

A review of Notre Amour by Roger Peyrefitte, 1967

Jedson   Wednesday, 1 November 2017

The movie, Les AmitiésParticulières, is based on a very great book, and is, in my opinion, one of the finest movies in the history of cinema. The story here about a boy who fell in love with Peyrefitte – just from reading the book – is new to me and quite fascinating. I do find the comment about Gide confusing. Why did Peyrefitte not like him?

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Edmund Marlowe   Wednesday, 15 November 2017

I am not sure that Peyrefitte did dislike Gide beyond simply disagreeing with him about sodomy, often a divisive issue. As Peyrefitte explains, Gide once accused a friend of having "brutalised" an Arab boy by sodomising him. I imagine Peyrefitte found this offensive and wrong-headed, since, in his view, only thus could pederastic love affairs be fully consummated. Elsewhere he describes Gide as a Calvinist and Puritan, which he may have associated with Gide's distaste for sodomy. Compared with Gide, I think Peyrefitte was always more self-assured about the rightness of sex with boys.

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jedson   Wednesday, 15 November 2017

Interesting. I think my own take on this is similar to what Father Glyphis says to Joe in Koan:

“The issue of whether a love relationship between a man and a boy leads to higher things may not depend, as Socrates would have it, mainly on whether it’s expressed sexually. Socrates had an unfortunate prejudice against physical life.”

“On what then would it depend?”

“On whether the man puts the child’s needs first, I think."

A review of J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys

jedson   13 November 2017

This is an excellent review by Donald Mader of a very fine book. I loved it—though it was, of course, terribly sad. As Mader suggests, Birkin gives us the info, and lets us make our own evaluations. I personally do not see Barrie as mentally stunted. Neoteny—the retention of certain juvenile characteristics in adult animals (such as salamanders)—is not abnormal. And perhaps it is not so with humans. Perhaps Barrie is child-like in some respects. And maybe he does share some characteristics with Peter Pan. But in a least one respect the two are quite different. Peter Pan really only loves himself. His own lost boys as well as Wendy are disposable. He is a narcissist. Whatever may or may not have been true for Barrie with regard to sex, he was not a narcissist. He loved the Llewelyn-Davies boys deeply. Isn’t it our capacity to love that, more than any other attribute, marks us a fully human?