Monday, December 13, 2004
"What a hernia, what a hernia!" ...
"What a pity childish associations cling to beautiful words like hernia, making their use as names impossible. Hernia! What a beautiful name for a girl! Hernia Hornstein!" ...
"Sirrah!", the guide cried in an enormous voice, "I am a Jew! and whenever anything Jewish is mentioned, I find it necessary to say that I am a Jew. I am a Jew!. A Jew!"
"Oh, you mistake me", Balso said, - "I have nothing against the Jews. I admire the Jews; they are a thrifty race. Some of my best friends are Jews." But his protests availed him little until he thought to quote C.M. Doughty's epigram. "The semites," - Balso said, - "are like to a man sitting in cloaca to the eyes, and whose brows touch heaven." - © Nathaniel West, "The Dream Life of Balso Snell". Ерофеев ... дальше - больше
Here's very good article: Varieties of Satire in the Art of Nathanael West by James F. Light. In particular, he writes "... theme with which West’s entire art is obsessed—lies and their exposure ...", which brings to mind On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt, suggesting that may be it was not outright lies West was obsessed with ...
A few quotes:
It is that which Homer subconsciously seeks in his pursuit of the movie extra, Faye Greener, a creature whose invitation, even in the movies in which she appears as a seductive temptress, is "closet to murder than to love. If you threw yourself on her, it would be like throwing yourself from the parapet of a skyscraper
In violence is momentary joy and in death is final victory—that assertion is West’s answer to St. John’s vision of the New Jerusalem and his invitation (Revelation 22:17) to "Come, let him who desires take the water of life without price."
[Beagle Hamlet] Darwin asserts the concept of spiritual Darwinism. Beagle Hamlet Darwin’s theory states that each of us, from birth onward, is doomed to dream of being more than animal and thus to compete with the likes of Dionysus, born three times, or Christ, born of a virgin.
Darwin realizes the tragedy of the competition in which men must spend their lives, "a competition that demanded their being more than animals" (p. 55). Because of this inward need, men must forever dream, and to support their dreams they pathetically juggle the paraphernalia that they have created to justify their foolishness ... to live without dreams was worse than to exist with no dreams at all, he had no answer to this dilemma ...
Life for the likes of Faye Greener is always a deal, a business transaction, a barter, a bargain, where they see their very self as a commodity, which has a market value to be exchanged by other commodities. Tod offers her sex, which she can not see in separation from its value on the market. Once she allows herself to go off, to relax her bargaining position, it's not Tod, it's this Mexican guy. Why? I do not know. © :me:
:west: :book: :me: :quote:
"What a pity childish associations cling to beautiful words like hernia, making their use as names impossible. Hernia! What a beautiful name for a girl! Hernia Hornstein!" ...
"Sirrah!", the guide cried in an enormous voice, "I am a Jew! and whenever anything Jewish is mentioned, I find it necessary to say that I am a Jew. I am a Jew!. A Jew!"
"Oh, you mistake me", Balso said, - "I have nothing against the Jews. I admire the Jews; they are a thrifty race. Some of my best friends are Jews." But his protests availed him little until he thought to quote C.M. Doughty's epigram. "The semites," - Balso said, - "are like to a man sitting in cloaca to the eyes, and whose brows touch heaven." - © Nathaniel West, "The Dream Life of Balso Snell". Ерофеев ... дальше - больше
Here's very good article: Varieties of Satire in the Art of Nathanael West by James F. Light. In particular, he writes "... theme with which West’s entire art is obsessed—lies and their exposure ...", which brings to mind On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt, suggesting that may be it was not outright lies West was obsessed with ...
A few quotes:
It is that which Homer subconsciously seeks in his pursuit of the movie extra, Faye Greener, a creature whose invitation, even in the movies in which she appears as a seductive temptress, is "closet to murder than to love. If you threw yourself on her, it would be like throwing yourself from the parapet of a skyscraper
In violence is momentary joy and in death is final victory—that assertion is West’s answer to St. John’s vision of the New Jerusalem and his invitation (Revelation 22:17) to "Come, let him who desires take the water of life without price."
[Beagle Hamlet] Darwin asserts the concept of spiritual Darwinism. Beagle Hamlet Darwin’s theory states that each of us, from birth onward, is doomed to dream of being more than animal and thus to compete with the likes of Dionysus, born three times, or Christ, born of a virgin.
Darwin realizes the tragedy of the competition in which men must spend their lives, "a competition that demanded their being more than animals" (p. 55). Because of this inward need, men must forever dream, and to support their dreams they pathetically juggle the paraphernalia that they have created to justify their foolishness ... to live without dreams was worse than to exist with no dreams at all, he had no answer to this dilemma ...
Life for the likes of Faye Greener is always a deal, a business transaction, a barter, a bargain, where they see their very self as a commodity, which has a market value to be exchanged by other commodities. Tod offers her sex, which she can not see in separation from its value on the market. Once she allows herself to go off, to relax her bargaining position, it's not Tod, it's this Mexican guy. Why? I do not know. © :me:
:west: :book: :me: :quote:
