(urth) This week in Google Alerts

Nick Lee starwaterstrain at gmail.com
Sun Nov 6 15:45:30 PST 2011


>
> Maybe not. Since ‘Liber’ is Latin for book, you have proved that Dionysus
> is in every book ever written! (Depending on your standard of proof, of
> course...)


Dionysus was also known as the "logos" or "word." There are more ways in
which he "is in every book ever written," but they aren't germane to this
discussion.

"Free Live Free" isn't simply a coincidence of names. The Dionysian cults
were about "living free." Also from Free Live Free: Jim Stubb (a stubbe is
a tree stump), Madame Serpentina (plenty of ties to Dionysus), Ozzie Barnes
(agricultural reference) and Candy Garth (a garth is a field or pasture).
Copious drinking is a theme of that novel as well: the "bottomless drinking
glass."

It might help you to know that my methodology of literary interpretation is
not wholly dependent on authorial intent. We see that "through a glass,
darkly" as Robert Scholes put it. Pan/Dionysus is a pretty common
mythological allusion, however, even in science fiction. Just look at *
Dhalgren* and *This Immortal*.
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