eternal sunshine of the spotless rectum

I guess the best way to put it is “results will vary”. In my case it was quite extraordinary. If you have a few hours to kill you can do much worse than spend some time on Google looking up the acceptance speeches from recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

William Faulkner  1949

“For more than twenty years of an insane history, hopelessly lost like all the men of my generation in the convulsions of time, I have been supported by one thing: by the hidden feeling that to write today was an honour because this activity was a commitment – and a commitment not only to write. Specifically, in view of my powers and my state of being, it was a commitment to bear, together with all those who were living through the same history, the misery and the hope we shared.”

Albert Camus  1957

“Such is the prestige of the Nobel award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practiced it through the ages. Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit – for gallantry in defeat – for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation.”

John Steinbeck  1962

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”

Ernest Hemingway  1954

“To enjoy poetry belonging to another language is to enjoy an understanding of the people to whom that language belongs, an understanding we can get in no other way.”

T.S. Elliot  1948

I remember walking from the library after filling my heads with these words and feeling a glow in my stomach. Much to my surprise that very evening whatever girl I was banging at the time gave a little cry, one of her hands on my ass cheek, and I saw a shaft of light dancing on the ceiling and its source appeared to my anus. I shifted my hips and illumination fell upon anything I pointed my butt at. Her hand slipped from my ass and my cheek snapped shut and quickly plunged the room back into darkness. Almost hesitantly I spread my ass cheeks and once again a bright light shone from the depths of me. The girl was convinced that I had tucked a small flashlight inside myself but after a quick peek she realized that was impossible. Of course I only saw her one more time after that and I told her that I had contracted some phosphorescent fungal infection and she was too dimwitted to question me.

The truth turned out to be much more interesting. After using up a favor with a friend in the Science Club, I had gotten him laid, no small feat believe me, I was able to use a spectrophotometer to analyze the electromagnetic spectra coming from my ass and found the Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) of my ass-light was 6000 kelvins and had the identical emission spectrum as our sun. I know I have a tendency to exaggerate at times but I swear I’m telling you the truth this time. I had 100% sunshine coming out of my ass. Now I could tell you that future sexual partners were often caught like a ‘deer in the headlights’ by my gift but that would be cheapening my story.

The rest is up to you. Now there is Google you don’t have to spend hours in a dusty library looking it up each author. Just try it. Start the new year by being inspired by the language and then pull down your pants and see if you don’t experience the same reaction I had. Really.

“The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.”

Ol’ Bill Faulkner again.