In the summer of 1963, when he was 68, Edmund Wilson wrote in his Journal:
The knowledge that death is not far away, that I shall soon disappear like a puff of smoke, has the effect of making earthly affairs seem unimportant and human beings more and more ignoble. It is harder to take human life seriously, including one’s own passions and achievements and efforts. In my tendency toward this state of mind, I have found Pope John fortifying. When over 80 and knowing he is doomed [by cancer], he gives all the energy left him to his council which will modernize the Church, and then dies with the greatest dignity.
A notable passage considering that Wilson’s impatience with all churches and religious creeds is frequently on display; for example, a bit farther on in this Journal he reports stalking the Catholic writer Wilfrid Sheed at a cocktail party in order to confront him with the opinion that the Christian doctrine of the atonement is wholly incoherent:
Got Wilfrid Sheed sitting in a corner and had a conversation with him, spoke of religion for the first time. I said I couldn’t even understand the idea about Christ: sent down by the Father to suffer and redeem the human race. If you believe this, you will be forgiven. What sense does this make? Wilfrid modestly replied that this doctrine had the advantage of providing a Christian intercessor.
I get the impression poor Sheed just wanted to enjoy a few drinks—“mumble, mumble, Christian intercesor, mumble, excuse me I need to refill.”
Being on the precipice of one of the last notches before 68, I feel I get too Wilson’s sense of the time ahead narrowing and the need to take one’s fortifications wherever they can be found. It’s cool he admires the pope for pursuing his pope work right to the end; here is one of my faves, Lucinda Williams, doing what she does, four different times of her life, the wear of the years evident, especially now that a stroke has rendered her unable to play guitar, but she keeps on keeping on. Minneapolis residents might like too the local angle to the last performance: “Hum’s Liquor” has stood for as long as I’ve been a legal drinker on Lyndale Avenue a block south of Franklin, near where Replacements guitarist Bob Stinson lived in what is now known as the Let it Be house at 2215 Bryant Ave. The song’s about Bob.
Williams also has some history with Minneapolis, not all of it, judging by her song “Minneapolis,” real happy.
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