March 2013
2 posts
3 tags
Does man kill or torture because he has come to the conclusion that he has the right to do so? He kills because others kill. He tortures because others torture. The most abhorrent deed becomes easy if the road to it has been paved… I kill because you kill. You and he and all of you torture, therefore, I torture. I killed him because you would have killed me if I had not. Such is the grammar...
February 2013
2 posts
3 tags
…a form hovering dark and mother-like, her awful face black with the mists of centuries, had aforetime quailed at that white master’s command, had bent in love over the cradles of his sons and daughters, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife,—aye, too, at his behest had laid herself low to his lust, and borne a tawny man-child to the world, only to see her dark...
May 2012
5 posts
2 tags
But tradition is useful to the writer only insofar as the writer is unconscious of its use; only insofar as it is invisible and inaudible; only insofar as the writer breathes it in with the air; only insofar as principled awareness and teacherliness are absent; only insofar as the writer is deaf to the pressure of the collectivity. What could be more treacherous to the genuine nature of the...
2 tags
“You were a quiet man
Who’d laugh like a hyena
On a hill, with your head...”
– Yusef Komunyakaa, from “Songs for My Father”
April 2012
10 posts
2 tags
But, as perhaps anyone concerned enough to study such matters will no doubt discover, a leader, who is after all uncommon by nature, can only pretend to be a common man. It is sometimes necessary to project himself as a nice guy, a regular fellow and all that, but such is nature of charismatic authority that the so-called common people will not tolerate very much common behavior in their...
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The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with oaths, but oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy. Contrary winds from out unstable skies, or contrary moods of his more varying mind, or shipwreck and sudden death in solitary waves—whatever was the cause, the blithe stranger never was seen again.
— Herman...
3 tags
I slept none that night. The further I was from the occasion of my fright the greater my apprehensions were, which is something contrary to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice of all creatures in fear. But I was so embarrassed with my own frightful ideas of the thing, that I formed nothing but dismal imaginations to myself, even though I was now a great way off it.
...
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Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what’s in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there’s always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.
Some have a great dream in life that they never accomplish. Others have no dream, and likewise never accomplish it.
To need to dominate others is...
2 tags
To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always following the other with immutable certainty. To escape punishment was to escape accusation; and few slaves had the fortune to do either, under the overseership of Mr. Gore. He was just proud enough to demand the most debasing homage of the slave, and quite servile enough to crouch, himself, at the feet of...
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March 2012
21 posts
2 tags
Such are the chimeras that beguile and misguide us in the morning of life. I have tried to set them down without much order, but many hearts will understand me. Illusions fall away one after another like the husks of a fruit, and that fruit is experience. It is bitter to the taste, but there is fortitude to be found in gall — forgive me my old-fashioned turns of phrase. Rousseau said the...
2 tags
My name’s Bill Bassett,’ says he to me, ‘and if you’ll call it professional pride instead of conceit, I’ll inform you that you have the pleasure of meeting the best burglar that ever set a gum-shoe on ground drained by the Mississippi River.’… ‘Tis loves that makes the bit go ‘round. Show me a house with the swag in it and a pretty parlor-maid,...
3 tags
“Will you see him?”
“My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers. My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then,...
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Puttermesser’s favorite tea was Celestial Seasonings Swiss Mint—each tea bag had attached to it an instructive or uplifting quotation. Henry Ward Beecher: “Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.” Victor Hugo: “Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of...
2 tags
No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it. Collective thought is stupid because it’s collective. Nothing passes into the realm of the collective without leaving at the border—like a toll—most of the intelligence it contained.
…
On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. Reason is faith in what...
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When he got afront of us, he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn’t want to disturb them…
— Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
3 tags
Allow me modestly to claim that I am much better now at ambiguities. I think I can say, however, that I have been spared the chief ambiguity that afflicts intellectuals, and this is that civilized individuals hate and resent the civilization that makes their lives possible. What they love is an imaginary human situation invented by their own genius and which they believe is the only true and the...
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If you enjoy the opinions you possess, if they give you a glow, be suspicious. They may be possessing you. An opinion should be treated like a guest who is likely to stay too late and drink all the whiskey.
— William H. Gass, “Influence” from A Temple Of Texts: Essays (2006)
2 tags
Scene in one thousand movies: a party, formal stuffed-shirt party, NYC cocktail party, country club party, New Year’s Eve party, hippie party—any kind of party—but with the one common denominator of a failed festival, a collapsed and fragmented community. There is always the painfully perceived gap between what is and what might be. If there were such a device as a...
2 tags
At work I dressed in the establishment manner, which, granted, was not without a touch of color, the establishment having learned that every color is essentially gray as long as everyone is wearing it. So I did not hesitate to show up for work in an orange tie, but never more orange than the orange others wore.
— Don DeLillo, Americana (1971)
February 2012
17 posts
1 tag
2 tags
An anecdote about Faulkner relates that once on a spring evening he invited a woman to come with him in his automobile, to see a bride in her wedding dress. He drove her over certain Mississippi back roads and eventually across a meadow, turning off his headlights and proceeding in darkness. At last he eased the car to a halt and said that the bride was before them. He switched on the lights,...
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…something is wrong here, if it was the end I would not so much mind, but how often I have said, in my life, before some new awful thing, It is the end, and it was not the end, and yet the end cannot be far off now, I shall fall as I go along and stay down or curl up for the night as usual among the rocks and before morning be gone. Oh I know I too shall cease and be as when I was not yet,...
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We waited for somebody to approach us and start a conversation. It was a party and we didn’t want to talk to each other. The whole point was to separate for the evening and find exciting people to talk to and then at the very end to meet again and tell each other how terrible it had been and how glad we were to be together again. This is the essence of Western civilization.
— Don...
2 tags
Counting the house was a habit of mine. The question of how many people were present in a particular place seemed important to me, perhaps because the recurring news of airline disasters and military engagements always stressed the number of dead and missing; such exactness is a tickle of electricity to the numbed brain. The next most important thing to find out was the degree of hostility. This...
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What is it like flying? Ravens will do the soaring, crows just seem to go where they’re going. They don’t just fly around as far as I can tell. Let the ravens soar. Let the ravens do the soaring. Let the ravens pile up the miles and break the records and get the prizes. The crows have to get from one place to another. They hear that I have bread, so they’re here. They hear...
