Category: Lit & Crit

Just in time for the holidaysJust in time for the holidays

“There is always a bull market for vengeance and violence in America.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

Waterboarding, for instanceWaterboarding, for instance

“Different people want different things in this world, and you have to be careful about taking risks.  Hungry people have the cunning of wild beasts.  A thing that seemed strange and wrong yesterday can seem perfectly reasonable tomorrow, or vice versa.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

This will not make you feel safeThis will not make you feel safe

“Everybody you see these days might have the power to get you locked up….  Who knows why?  They will have reasons straight out of some horrible Kafka story, but in the end it won’t matter any more than a full moon behind clouds.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear (ellipsis in original)

There’s one right over thereThere’s one right over there

“Vicious thieves have always ruled the world.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

Apples and orangesApples and oranges

“I haven’t found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as sitting at a desk writing, trying to imagine a story no matter how bizarre it is.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

You can try this at homeYou can try this at home

“Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

Distant haze over the credibility gapDistant haze over the credibility gap

“Never believe the first thing an FBI agent tells you about anything–especially not if he seems to believe you are guilty of a crime.  Maybe he has no evidence.  Maybe he’s bluffing.  Maybe you are innocent.  Maybe.  The Law can be hazy on these things.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

And don’t you forget itAnd don’t you forget it

“The only real difference between the Sane and the Insane, in this world, is the Sane have the power to have the Insane locked up.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

Sorta makes it all worth itSorta makes it all worth it

“Every once in a while, but not often, you can sit down and write a thing that you know is going to stand people’s hair on end for the rest of their lives—a perfect memory of some kind, like a vision, and you can see the words rolling out of your fingers and bouncing around for a while like wild little jewels before they finally roll into place & line up just exactly like you wanted them to….  Wow!  Look at that shit!  Who wrote that stuff?  What?  Me?  Hot damn!” — Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

Stuff it full of catnipStuff it full of catnip

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it into the object of our game; to turn it into a toy.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

Can’t say if it’s a good thing or notCan’t say if it’s a good thing or not

“It has been extremely lucky that up to now wars have been fought only by men.  If they had been fought by women, they would have been so consistently cruel that today there wouldn’t be a single human being left on the planet.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

The unmoved episodeThe unmoved episode

“If our lives were endless, like the lives of the gods of antiquity, the concept of episode would lose its meaning, for in infinity every event, no matter how trivial, would meet up with its consequence and unfold into a story.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

Watch your stepWatch your step

“No episode is a priori condemned to remain an episode forever, for every event, no matter how trivial, conceals within itself the possibility of sooner or later becoming the cause of other events and thus changing into a story or an adventure.  Episodes are like land mines.  The majority of them never explode, but the most unremarkable of them may someday turn into a story that will prove fateful to you.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

Sleeping on the slatsSleeping on the slats

“Life is as stuffed with episodes as a mattress is with horsehair, but a poet (according to Aristotle) is not an upholsterer and must remove all stuffing from his story, even though real life consists of nothing but precisely such stuffing.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

In our next episode, Biff boffs BambiIn our next episode, Biff boffs Bambi

“In Aristotle’s Poetics, the episode is an important concept.  Aristotle did not like episodes.  According to him, an episode, from the point of view of poetry, is the worst possible type of event.  It is neither an unavoidable consequence of preceding action nor the cause of what is to follow: it is outside the causal chain of events that is the story.  It is merely a sterile accident that can be left out without making the story lose its intelligible continuity and is incapable of making a permanent mark upon the life of the characters.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

The answer could be yesThe answer could be yes

“Isn’t the cause of most bad paintings and bad novels simply the fact that artists consider their passion for art something holy, some sort of mission if not duty (duty to oneself, even to mankind)?” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

The bearable happiness of beingThe bearable happiness of being

“Living, there is no happiness in that.  Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world.  But being, being is happiness.  Being: becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

That’s why we write themThat’s why we write them

“What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

Taking the slow low roadTaking the slow low road

“Road: a strip of ground over which one walks.  A highway differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point to another.  A highway has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects.  A road is a tribute to space.  Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop.  A highway is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.  Before roads and paths disappeared from the landscape, they had disappeared from the human soul: man stopped wanting to walk, to walk on his own feet and to enjoy it.  What’s more, he no longer saw his own life as a road, but as a highway: a line that led from one point to another, from the rank of captain to the rank of general, from the role of wife to the role of widow.  Time became a mere obstacle to life, an obstacle that had to be overcome by ever greater speed.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

Never getting it rightNever getting it right

“To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly.  Man doesn’t know how to be mortal.  And when he dies, he doesn’t even know how to be dead.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

Pinch him and see what he thinksPinch him and see what he thinks

“I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.  I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi, emphasis in original)

Fight for your right to fight for your rightFight for your right to fight for your right

“The more the fight for human rights gains in popularity, the more it loses any concrete content, becoming a kind of universal stance of everyone toward everything, a kind of energy that turns all human desires into rights.  The world has become man’s right and everything in it has become a right: the desire for love the right to love, the desire for rest the right to rest, the desire for friendship the right to friendship, the desire to exceed the speed limit the right to exceed the speed limit, the desire for happiness the right to happiness, the desire to publish a book the right to publish a book, the desire to shout in the street in the middle of the night the right to shout in the street.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

Tap-dancing through the minefieldTap-dancing through the minefield

“War can only exist in a world of tragedy; from the beginning of history man has known only a tragic world and has not been capable of stepping out of it.  The age of tragedy can be ended only by the revolt of frivolity.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

Hostage to all fortuneHostage to all fortune

“A man can take his own life.  But he cannot take his own immortality.  As soon as immortality has you aboard, you can’t get off, and even if you shoot yourself you’ll stay on deck along with your suicide.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

A joyful noyse?A joyful noyse?

“Does love for art really exist and has it ever existed?  Is it not a delusion?  When Lenin proclaimed that he loved Beethoven’s Appassionata above all else, what was it that he really loved?  What did he hear?  Music?  Or a majestic noise that reminded him of the solemn stirrings in his soul, a longing for blood, brotherhood, executions, justice, and the absolute?  Did he derive joy from the tones, or from the musings stimulated by those tones, which had nothing to do with art or with beauty?” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

The best-dressed person in the graveyardThe best-dressed person in the graveyard

“Up to a certain moment our death seems too distant for us to occupy ourselves with it.  It is unseen and invisible.  That is the first, happy period of life.  But then we suddenly begin to see our death ahead of us and we can no longer keep ourselves from thinking about it.  It is with us.  And because immortality sticks to death as tightly as Laurel to Hardy, we can say that our immortality is with us, too.  And the moment we know it is with us we feverishly begin to look after it.  We have a formal suit made for it, we buy a new tie for it, worried that others might select the clothes and tie, and select badly.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

Suffer the little childrenSuffer the little children

“Nothing is more useful than to adopt the status of a child: a child can do whatever it likes, for it is innocent and inexperienced; it need not observe the rules of social behavior, for it has not yet entered a world ruled by form; it may show its feelings, whether they are appropriate or not.” — Milan Kundera, Immortality (trans. Kussi)

High Street 7.3 — Freedom’s Just Another Word (cont.)High Street 7.3 — Freedom’s Just Another Word (cont.)

“Every writer is offering a true account of the activities of the mind.” — Donald Barthelme (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 7.3 — “Freedom’s Just Another Word” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 7.4 — “Freedom’s Just Another Word” (fin.))

High Street 7.2 — Freedom’s Just Another Word (cont.)High Street 7.2 — Freedom’s Just Another Word (cont.)

“There’s nothing so beautiful as having a very difficult problem.  It gives purpose to life.” — Donald Barthelme (from Not-Knowing, ed. Herzinger)

High Street 7.2 — “Freedom’s Just Another Word” (cont.) is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 7.3 — “Freedom’s Just Another Word” (cont.))

High Street 7.1 — Freedom’s Just Another WordHigh Street 7.1 — Freedom’s Just Another Word

“If we want to go on existing we need to summon up all our strength in order to wrench ourselves off the spot where we’re stuck.” — Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

High Street 7.1 — “Freedom’s Just Another Word” is posted today.

(Tomorrow: High Street 7.2 — “Freedom’s Just Another Word” (cont.))