Your grandfather in England sounds great, by the way.

I am a total beginner at all this, aside from one semester of Lit. in grade 12 with a FANTASTIC, animated, realistic, and respect-giving-and-demanding teacher. Some recent visits with my grandfather in England (who passed away in January) had me inspired – LONGING actually – to become familiar with works such as the Iliad etc. The way he would wind literature into daily conversations and laugh and do impersonations throughout – it seamed to give his life experience and being such richness and essence. Anyways, that’s what got me here to this site I think. And I’m loving it! Like Shannon, I had never even heard of Gilgamesh before…

I’ve been reading all the comments as well – I get a little lost in them sometimes, but they’re definitely interesting. I like how you comment on so many of them Clay. And… I’m pretty sure I’ve found my way here way too late to offer advice on style now… but I LOVED Post 3. I kept thinking “Wow! I’m having fun reading this and learning loads in a way I’ll remember at the same time!” But, incase this still applies at all, I would definitely vote for the use of all 3 styles.. as you feel inclined with different posts.

As far as the religious side goes, I moved 4 years ago from being sure of what I believed into an exploration and search of my own, so I found Post 1 especially interesting for that. Looking forward to more (after I’ve gotten some sleep). I’m just hoping that in future posts you have responded to Post 1 requests to represent the views that you critique fairly and entirely, instead of only presenting their extremes and stereotypes. I think that would make for a highly enlightening and educational read.

Thanks for all the energy you’ve put into this site – I’m enjoying it immensely!

–Mr. Clé

Monsieur d’Argile, the eigth article on Gilgamesh
is witty and full of insights. This may be the one place in the internet where Gilgamesh is not fragmentary and dusty,
but alive and sparkling !

Laissez les bons temps rouler !

Noams last blog post..Bab-El

So I happened to read David Sedaris’s “naked” back to back with Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild”. The former a self depreciating autobiography and the latter an idolizing posthumous biography. Maybe it’s coincidence that I read them so close to each other but I drew a lot of strange parrallels and orthognals. David and Alex did a lot of the same things for very different reasons. Often they would do the same things for different reasons, or different things for the same reasons.

David would spend summers on the road hitchhiking and making fun of the people who were kind to him thinking of them as rubes. He’d get migrant type jobs to make ends meet from here to there, just to get away from his family. Alex gave up his considerable trust, donated it to charity, and took to the road decidedly to be a tramp. Ditching the car and getting migrant type jobs for the love of the world and paying everyone who would show him a kindness with everything he had to give. Alex also did this to get away from his family. There were eccentricities on all sides of these parties.

Alex would never steal, or allow anyone he knew to do so, he would barely even accept gifts. He would decidedly make do with as little as possible because he was of strong principle on this matter. To him stealing would be a major sin. David wouldn’t steal, never even think of it, not because it was wrong, but because he was, well, a coward. When confronted with a person who wanted to steal from his employer, he didn’t have the spine to stop him from stealing. After the thief left, he went to an atm, got cash and replaced the money so he wouldn’t be blamed for the theft, or the lack of prevention thereof.

There’s more but I’ll see if anyone bites.

and perhaps experimental comics
toward the end of the end of the world, ut-napistim and ourshanabi.

Your website has been a great reading,
old french scholar Bottero has been kind of kicked in the hay
by all your enthusiasm.

C”était le premier, c’était le seul rêve…

Noam.