Whatcha Readin?

Just heard an interview on NPR, don't know what show it was. A woman was interviewing a Literary Critic about Beowulf which has just come out in a movie. If I didn't have a cold I would have gone to see it this week-end. This Critic is totally fascinating; his name is Michael Dirda and he's just published a book called Classics for Pleasure. It appears that he can bring all this old dead stuff back to life. So I had to look ...... you know the drill ....

Michael Dirda
b. Nov. 6, 1948 Lorain, Ohio // This is probably not his real birth date; the chart is really fascinating nevertheless.

Sun 15 Scorpio; Moon Capricorn or Aquarius, probably Capricorn; NN 5 Taurus

So Dirda said that he reads or writes about Literature for 8 hours a day, just like a normal job. He says that he reads slowly and mouths the words while he reads. He's read absolutely everything. And he says that he has abnormally good memory retention for what he reads.

Dirda has Sun in Scorpio squaring Pluto so this shows a focused, driven character. Scorpio's good for bringing old dead literature back to life. This is a guy who can finish a book. Imagine that. Capricorn Moon in combination with that Plutonian stuff shows a whole lot of determination and strong self motivated work ethic. This is somebody who wants to understand a story at its deepest level. In the Corporate World this is called understanding the Bottom Line and Talking Brass Tacks. In the intellectual world it means that he understands story structure and will dig to understand human motivation.

When Dirda speaks he has a calm friendly voice. His Mercury is in Libra very well placed trining Uranus at 1 Cancer and sextiling Jupiter. That shows all systems "Go" in the brains department. Jupiter's at 29 Sagittarius opposite Uranus here, both on Aries Points which brings his mental prowess before the public. I think that Uranus has more to do with Memory than it's given credit for and here in Cancer, the sign that rules the past it must be pretty powerful. Mercury might be squaring his Moon which might in turn be out of bounds. I have no idea how that affects one's Memory. I'd imagine that one would enjoy the challenge of holding on to as much as one could mentally with this aspect. The out of bounds part would just emphasize these qualities.

Two more things are really cool about Dirda's chart. For one, his Mars and Jupiter are both in Sagittarius. They are not in conjunction but they are Parallel. And they are contraparallel to Uranus in Cancer and Pluto in Leo. I've never seen so many planets in Parallel/Contraparallel to each other. If you think of Mars-Jupiter-Uranus and Pluto all in conjunction with each other you certainly envision a powerhouse of a person. Someone who can accomplish something on a massive scale. And this guy has read everything. I mean everything. Interesting that he's read all the Epic Literatures. And he brings it down to human level like describing how the Icelandic Sagas are Northern Europe's versions of Spaghetti Westerns. Who wouldn't want to look into that? I mean, this is what Scholars are supposed to be able to do. He can even fake like he's not a snob, I guess that's the Libra Mercury and Uranus.

Then the next cool thing are Dirda's current Return Transits. He's got a wide, out of element Grand Trine between North Node in Taurus and Jupiter in Sagittarius and Saturn in Virgo. Right now he's going through both his Jupiter and Saturn Returns so the whole thing is set off like a pinwheel. I suppose you'd have to know what houses they're in to guess what that means. Something with career? Probably everyone in the Universe heard him being interviewed tonight. I mean, the Martians, everyone. And we're all going out to buy penguin editions of the Norse Myths tomorrow. Really, he said there's a character in there who never smiles except when he's about to go into battle. Clint Eastwood is probably going to make a movie... I'm so excited.