"It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row (1945)
"Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?" said Richard Frost.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
'the traits of success'
'all of our so-called successful men'
Doc said, "Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think," he went on, "that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else." This speech so dried out Doc's throat that he drained his beer glass. He waved two fingers in the air and smiled. "There's nothing like that first taste of beer," he said.—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row (1945)
Richard Frost said, "I think they're just like anyone else. They just haven't any money."
"They could get it," Doc said. "They could ruin their lives and get money. Mack has qualities of genius. They're all very clever if they want something. They just know the nature of things too well to be caught in that wanting."
Thursday, April 21, 2011
...without some kind of God, Man is not even very interesting.
Thus the River makes the book a great book. As with [Joseph] Conrad, we are continually reminded of the power and terror of Nature, and the isolation and feebleness of Man. Conrad remains always the European observer of the tropics, the white man's eye contemplating the Congo and its black gods. But Mark Twain is a native, and the River God is his God. It is as a native that he accepts the River God, and it is the subjection of Man that gives to Man his dignity. For without some kind of God, Man is not even very interesting.
—T.S. Eliot, Introduction to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1950)
Thursday, April 14, 2011
'the wages is just the same'
They went off, and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little, ain't got no show—when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on,—s'pose you'd a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I'd feel bad—I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.
—Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
Monday, April 11, 2011
The Dead Letter and the Appalling Command
I certainly do not wish to consider as witnesses of my inner and living faith the scribes and pharisees of our age, men who turn the dear holy Bible into a cold twaddle that destroys heart and soul...Only I do not like to give myself and my heart where it is misunderstood; so I am wont to keep silence before those who are theologians by profession..., just as much as before those who do not wish to know anything at all of the whole business because every kind of religion, which is after all the first and final need of man, has been marred for them from their earliest days by the dead letter and by the appalling command to believe.—Friedrich Hölderlin, Werke (January 1799)
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Orphan in the World
He told the boy that although he was huerfano still he must cease his wanderings and make for himself some place in the world because to wander in this way would become for him a passion and by this passion he would become estranged from men and so ultimately from himself. He said that the world could only be known as it existed in men's hearts. For while it seemed a place which contained men it was in reality a place contained within them and therefore to know it one must look there and come to know those hearts and to do this one must live with men and not simply pass among them. He said that while the huerfano might feel that he no longer belonged among men he must set this feeling aside for he contained within him a largeness of spirit which men could see and that men would wish to know him and that the world would need him even as he needed the world for they were one. Lastly he said that while this itself was a good thing like all good things it was also a danger. --Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing (1994)
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