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  • From: Leonard <leonardh6363 AT gmail.com>
  • To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] Laissez les bons temps rouler!
  • Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2026 12:47:40 -0500

Chuck!

 

So great to hear from you on Mardi Gras with that poetic quote from Binx.

 

I can’t help thinking about Nick Carraway’s realization that he (also) turns 30 in his book, at a climactic time in “Gatsby” following the hotel clash between Jay and Tom:

 

“I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade. … Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”

 

Many writers have hinted at the similarities between Binx and his philosophical, poetic (and humorous) predecessor.  I feel like the ancient mariner trying to convince people that the connection is profound, so I put an article in the good old “Mississippi Quarterly” (Vol. 73, No. 4, 2021) that has gone unnoticed lo these many years. You (and the Percy Projectors) might enjoy it.

 

Thank you so much for Binx’s thoughts!

 

Laissez les bons temps….

Leonard

On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 11:18 AM <lowry.charles AT gmail.com> wrote:
Happy Mardi Gras to one and all, and happy birthday (tomorrow) to Binx.

Several years ago I developed the habit of rereading The Moviegoer in the couple days between Quinquagesima Sunday and Mardi Gras, or, more severely, Shrove Tuesday.  Each year, it seems, a different paragraph jumps out to grab me.  Here is 2026:

“Three o’clock and suddenly awake amid the smell of dreams and of the years come back and peopled and blown away again like smoke.  A young man am I, twenty nine, but I am as full of dreams as an ancient.  At night the years come back and perch around my bed like ghosts.”

Binx, just marry Kate and go to medical school.  And happy thirtieth birthday tomorrow.

Chuck Lowry
Brooklyn, New York
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