From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" 
Subject: RE: (urth) Watts, presentiments, eponyms
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 10:49:49 -0800

> I'm not quite sure what the context is for reprinting this. 

I don't have my copies to hand, but didn't Wolfe use one verse
(the 'a thousand ages in thy sight' verse) as a epigraph to one
of the volumes of tBotNS?

> I'm a heathen now, but I was brought up as an Episcopalian/Anglican
> and I will staunchly say that our music is the best

Pffff. I was also, and now I'm a Catholic, and I will staunchly say
that the Methodists have everyone else beat, except for the really 
good gospel choirs.

> Wolfe is RC; this doesn't count for him,.

Not so. Catholicism realized in the '60s and '70s that they had some
really lousy hymns (see the book "Why Catholics Can't Sing"), and 
started efforts to change this by (1) introducing bad folk songs (anyone 
who was around then still shudders at the phrase "folk mass" and some
of them can be driven to apoplexy by a few bars of "Kum-by-yah") and
(2) cribbing good songs from other churches. So it's pretty common,
for example, to hear "Amazing Grace" in a Catholic church these days.

It would not be at all unlikely for Wolfe to hear Watts in church; more
to the point, though, any serious fan of Lewis Caroll eventually hunts
Watts down, if only to squash him like a bug.

--Dan'l


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