Iris & Nancy,
I saw the tattoos my FIRST viewing - they were so startling - but I missed the nuzzle, so what could I know?! Between the two of you, maybe you'll keep me in some neutral, sane place :-) Being at home with mom is wonderful, but actually accomplishing any work is not yet happening...I'm going to have to start getting up a little earlier than she does for a couple hours of quiet time....Meanwhile evenings need to be for the board here.
OK...the tattoos...I'm going to get there in a roundabout way.
Did you guys see the post about Annie Proulx language being difficult - needing a dictionary, etc? I need to post back over there, because I did a little research. In her article about the red carpet being overshadowed by scientology purple in
The Guardian, I counted 4 words/allusions I simply could not get...but I brushed past, getting the general idea from context...here are the 4:
1) stentorian - from m-w.com: extremely loud
2) plangent - from m-w.com: Etymology: Latin plangent-, plangens, present participle of plangere to strike, lament -- more at PLAINT 1 : having a loud reverberating sound; 2 : having an expressive and especially plaintive quality
The next two gave me fits:
3)culchah - googled it and found a pile of info, but nothing definitive...definitely related to music and may music as a societal music? It would take three days of intensive reading to really figure this one out.
4)heffalump - not in the dictionary, but seems to refer to a character in an A.A. Milne/Winnie the Pooh story
So all this reasearch reminded me of the dancing tattoo woman which reminded me of a story I read by Flannery O'Conner AGES ago...called
Parker's Back. The gist of the story is that Parker is married to a fundamentalist Christian evangelical woman who abhors his tattoos - she sees them as defiling the temple of God, etc....So Parker gets a giant tattoo of Jesus on his back. His wife essentially sh*ts monkeys and Parker cannot for the life of him understand why she would object to that tattoo, completely missing out on the whole graven image, blasphemy message his wife has been trying to convey. Remember Jack & Ennis' innocence about the Pentecost?
So...I'm wondering if McMurtry has read Flannery O'Connor? I'm sure the answer is yes. Did he have that in mind?
Or is a tattoo, just a tattoo?
Iris - I think you might be right on with the disguising oneself idea...Is Cassie anything more really than his sincere but misguided attempt to cover up his true self? or redeem himself?
I hope this never ends..I'm listening to my soundtrack..Mom is in bed..it's nice around here tonight. i wish we had that chat option up and running...I know Phillip will get to it when he can.
BTW...I posted about this site over on
www.suzannebrockmann.com's bulletin board. Her loyal readers have been very active in writing her publishers expressing support for her gay characters...so we may be seeing some of them coming over here perusing. I'm sorry to say that I was too involved in seeing this movie 19 times to go to that board for the past 3 months. It's not archived so I don't have a feel about their BBM reactions, but I explained a bit about my experience and our nice warm comfy ladies' corner.
Love y'all.
Lynne
