Comments on: Four Writers and Their Strange Obsessions

By: Ali S.

Ali S. — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:50:12 +0000

Egads. James Joyce TMI!!! O_O

By: The El Bee En

The El Bee En — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:12:44 +0000

I seem to recall that Joyce while walking with Nora or some other female in Dublin one night found the sound of her urinating highly arousing. Any Joyceian types out there that know the true story?

By: James Schend

James Schend — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 21:08:36 +0000

Seems to be that age 51 is a pretty average age when you die in 1850, coffee addiction or no. A quick Google shows me that the average American lifespan in 1850 was 47: http://www.well.com/~mp/a31.html

By: Kalel

Kalel — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:18:01 +0000

So how did we first get wind of Joyce’s passing fancy?

By: hwang buk-les

hwang buk-les — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:05:58 +0000

You might want to correct the spelling to ‘Vachel Lindsay. btw, what’s your source for the info on his germ phobia? I know he wasn’t the most stable guy in the world, but this germ thing seems a tiny bit apocryphal. Eh, maybe I’m just naturally suspicious.

By: Stacy

Stacy — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:57:38 +0000

Well, without getting too explicit (family blog!!), a lot of his other letters talk about other things he loves about his Nora, like the “little brown stain on the seat of your white drawers,” so I’m assuming it wasn’t just a passing joke.

By: ted

ted — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:45:22 +0000

Yeah, I wondered if they were exaggerating the Fart thing. If you can imagine making one joke and having it haunt you the rest of your days.

And who the heck was Vachel Lindsey? Did he write anything that anybody would actually recognize?

By: Bren

Bren — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 10:34:40 +0000

“…interpreting my exhumed flirty Gmails too literally and not getting the point of being fucked up and pushing the limits of good taste because it is childish fun and can be arousing, even when the literal subject matter by itself is not arousing.”

Well said dgaicun. Nice to have one of my particular quirks explained so well. Lol.

By: dgaicun

dgaicun — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 07:37:51 +0000

“But oddly, he seemed to be most obsessed with her farts. It’s a repeated theme in his letters – here’s one example”

Is it “one example”, or is it the only example? I found a website with his love letters to Nora last year, and I read nothing like an “obsession” with farts. There was the occasional being-colorfully-dirty-for-the-sake-of-being-colorfully-dirty mention of farts, with the quote you cite being pretty much the only notable example, really. They are quite obviously tongue-in-cheek (so to speak!), and are quite obviously more about having fun and being saucy than tweaking out on some fetish.

This is only irritating because I’ve come across other websites that treat these letters as more bizarre than they actually are.

I have this annoying image in my head of stiff collared Google historians in the year 2100 interpreting my exhumed flirty Gmails too literally and not getting the point of being fucked up and pushing the limits of good taste because it is childish fun and can be arousing, even when the literal subject matter by itself is not arousing.

By: Moi

Moi — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:52:13 +0000

Makes me want to read up more about these authors lives. I enjoy a good fart joke now and then but sexual fascination?? Much strangeness…

By: Justin

Justin — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:25:44 +0000

Ok I was reading this and it was all very interesting until I got to the last part. Then I busted out laughing.