Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Notre Dame of Paris (2)

Notre Dame of Paris (2). Allan Temko. New York: Time, Inc. Book Division. 1952.


Why read it? “Henry Adams saw the uniqueness of the Middle Ages, not in their courts or castles or battles, but in their cathedrals.”


The Cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris was a communal effort dedicated to Our Lady, the Blessed Mother, the Mother of Christ. She was loved because she meant forgiveness. God and Christ were the judges. Mary could forgive, no matter the sin.


Notre Dame was the climactic achievement of medieval Paris, “…the expression of a social and spiritual endeavor that embraced an extraordinary range of professions and classes….a superb common effort in which the entire community took part, the manual laborer as well as the master artist, the serf and villein as well as the merchant and the prince.”


Sample quotes and ideas (continued):

“Architects changed, and bishops, but the grand original design of Maurice de Sully remained dominant.” p. 117.


“In spite of the unity of Notre-Dame, each change in architects is detectable.” p. 117.


“Except for superficial additions, a typical cathedral was built in less than one hundred years.” p. 140.


“Although the master builders operated in a pre-industrial age, they had a variety of technical equipment at their disposal: the winch and the windlass, the inclined plane, the lever and the jack.” p. 140.


“His was the earliest known use of the device [flying buttress] which, like most great inventions, emerged in several regions almost simultaneously.” p. 148.


“For Mary knows not how to judge, but only to forgive….” p. 164.


“Merely to walk through its broad, living shadow, when the sun stands behind the towers at morning, is to share its optimism.” p. 178.


“…is to create truly classic architecture, which, once built, cannot be conceived as standing otherwise or in any other place…the site, climate, the amount of light in the air, the materials available, are all part of great construction; they were all deeply considered by the Master Builder…. The same Master would have built a different church…at Reims and Amiens.” p. 179.


“There can be little doubt that this design was first drawn on parchment…. Regularity of proportions alone is proof of an advance plan….” p. 180.


“The façade is France.” p. 181.


“…none [of the elements] clamoring for attention; none existing for its own sake…none disrupting the harmony of the whole; none which would not be missed if it were removed; what makes this the façade of all facades is the complexity of the composition and the resulting simplicity of over-all effect.” p. 183.


“Both Shakespeare and the Master Builder borrowed materials from previous artists, only to transform and color them with unprecedented beauty….” p. 183.


“…depicts nothing less than the whole natural universe as it was known at the start of the thirteenth century.” p. 202.


“Notre Dame speaks for the nation; it was a national church constructed simultaneously with a national state, at a time when neither could have existed without the other.” p. 216.


“And perched on the balustrades, staring over the city, crouching, grimacing, ready to spring into space and pounce downwards, are hundreds of grotesques—the gargoyles of Notre Dame—inhuman birds with half-human faces who have sprouted like myths form the rock…have flown out of the construction, chased from the interior of the church by the Virgin, who from the middle of the twelfth century onward banished monsters from her sanctuary but kept them as terrifying guardians of the outer walls and towers.” p. 236.


LaCorbusier: “A Cathedral is a difficult problem ingeniously solved….” p. 275.


“Mary lifted and civilized the entire Western world; in an era of continual male brutality, her emblem, the rose, became the sign of the less brutal woman….” p. 297.


“The nation has forgotten what once caused it to build….” p. 299.


Comment: A cathedral in honor of Mary who is all-forgiving and an entire community and all levels of society join together to build it. Another view of the Middle Ages. RayS.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Notre Dame of Paris (1)

Allan Temko. New York: Time, Inc. Book Division. 1952.


Why read it? “Henry Adams saw the uniqueness of the Middle Ages, not in their courts or castles or battles, but in their cathedrals.”


The Cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris was a communal effort dedicated to Our Lady, the Blessed Mother, the Mother of Christ. She was loved because she meant forgiveness. God and Christ were the judges. Mary could forgive, no matter the sin.


Notre Dame was the climactic achievement of medieval Paris, “…the expression of a social and spiritual endeavor that embraced an extraordinary range of professions and classes….a superb common effort in which the entire community took part, the manual laborer as well as the master artist, the serf and villein as well as the merchant and the prince.”


Sample quotes and ideas:

“So the cathedral stands today, isolated in space but even more isolated in spirit from the life that clatters around it….” Louis Mumford. p. xv.


“For, whatever its other qualities, Notre Dame is never boring; and this is one test of a masterpiece.” p. 4.


“All belonged to the Church, and the Church belonged to all.” p. 6.

[The Cathedral’s] “…gods and demigods watched over every human action, provided for every human contingency, inspired every human creation.” p. 6.


The Middle Ages: “…an age of beauty and brutality for which no generalization is possible, to which no single aphorism apples.” p. 7.


[Notre Dame] “…possesses the essential variety of life itself….” p. 13.


“…the communal Middle Ages…when men as at few moments in history enjoyed their joint capacity to create.” p. 14.


“This carving was necessarily abstract, since effigies—that is, identifiable human or animal figures—would have smacked of idolatry.” p. 35.


The Abbe Suger “…dared to dream…from the material to the immaterial….” p. 78.


“There is no waste—the first crime in architecture as in other arts.” p. 78.


“And by 1160 the noble bullocks, whom the grateful community honored with statues in the towers of the cathedral, were dragging stone up the steep, twisting road to the summit.” p. 90.


“…marvelous little scenes of medieval life would be seen tucked in the corners of the windows, which were actually signatures of the donors…shows that the total community has never, in any part of the world, or in any era, been so strikingly represented in the creation of beauty.” p. 100.


“The Cathedral was conceived with a lavishness that the mercantile mind has come to call waste, since it shows no immediate profit and turnover, in spite of an enormous investment of capital.” p. 102.


“Hidden parts of the monument were given the same elaborate care as the great façade.” p. 103.


“The master-builder…learned draftsmanship, stonecutting, quarrying, lime-burning, and a host of related skills, whose secrets were carefully guarded.” p. 104.


“Thus to conquer space, to thrust such a mass upward and make it live, required a single overriding creative intelligence; Henry Adams fancifully insisted it was the Virgin’s; he may have been right.” p. 114.


To be continued.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (3)

Jacques Maritain. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. New York: Meridian Books. 1955.


10-second review: Creative intuition is the seed of art and poetry. Poetry is a process in communication between the artist and the inner spirit of the objects outside the artist. Oriental art concentrates on the inner spirit of the object, not the inner spirit of the artist. Western art has developed in focus from the outside object to the inner consciousness of the artist’s mind.


Sample quotes and ideas. The ideas in bold-face print are my attempts to paraphrase the quote.

“…poetic experience, though it terminates ‘in an arrangement of words on paper,’ or of notes on a score or of colors on a canvas, is of itself a sort of natural contemplation, obscure and affective, and implies a moment of silence and alert receptivity. Without this moment of contemplation there is no poetic activity.” [Poetic experience requires a moment of receptive contemplation.] p. 188.


“…the essential difference which separates the poetic sense from the logical sense.” 191.


“As to the logical or intelligible sense, it is only one of the elements or components of the poetic sense.” p. 192.


“…no poem can be absolutely clear, since no poem can receive its being from the intelligible or logical sense uniquely.” [No poem can be completely clear because no poem is completely logical. The logical sense only contributes to the poetic sense.] p. 194.


“The intelligible sense dawning in the images is only implicit.” [The meaning of the image is implicit.] p. 197.


“The intelligible meaning is not only implicit, but undetermined. Our intelligence is aware of the existence of a signification, but the signified remains unknown.” [The exact meaning of an image is not determined.] p. 198.


“For the poem is an object made of words, the most ungrateful and treacherous material—sounds which are poor in color and variety, signs which are worn out by social use, haunted by swarms of adventitious associations, and stubbornly fixed in the least connotations of their meaning.” [Words are a limited instrument to use to convey the poetic sense.] p. 207.


“Thus it is that the music of words is of absolute necessity for the classical poem; and together with the music of words, the rhyme, and all the prosodic requirements of a regular form. All these laws and exigencies are but the instruments of liberation of the poetic sense.” [All of the requirements of poetry are necessary in the classic poem to liberate the poetic sense. The controls on the language liberate.] p. 213.


“Modern poetry has undertaken completely to set free the poetic sense.” p. 214.


“…modern poetry had to dispense with the regular form of the poem, and the necessity of the rhyme, and the other requirements of classical prosody.” p. 221.


“…criticism is but ‘the satisfaction of a suppressed creative wish.’ ”p. 224.


“The poet does not have to invest any argument with emotional force, because he does not begin with any argument. He begins with creative emotion, or poetic intuition, and the argument follows.” [The poet begins with creative emotion or poetic intuition, not with an argument.] p. 258.


“…blanks…have as much impact on the mind as what is actually expressed.” [What is not expressed is as significant as what is expressed.]p. 260.


“Of every music it is true to say that the song begins where the word stops, as a bursting forth of a spiritual and emotional stir or exultation of the subjectivity—too deeply subjective, too existentially singular, too incommunicably affective to be possibly conveyed by any meaning of the words.” [The music begins when the words end because only the music can express the inexpressible.] p. 294.


“…music…has the peculiar privilege…of expressing—beyond any possible meaning of words—the most deeply subjective…to be possibly expressed by any other art.” p. 295.


Comment: I think I understood the main outlines of the book’s thought. I agree that art and poetry begin with creative intuition and a powerful emotion, that logic is only one component in art and poetry and that Western art and poetry have developed from a focus on external objects to the inner consciousness of the artist. Along the way the author provides other insights into art and poetry.


Was it worth the struggle to understand this book? I think so. Like the intuition that is the seed of art and poetry, the author’s ideas will grow in my mind. RayS.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (2)

Jacques Maritain. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. New York: Meridian Books. 1955.


10-second review: Creative intuition is the seed of art and poetry. Poetry is a process in communication between the artist and the inner spirit of the objects outside the artist. Oriental art concentrates on the inner spirit of the object, not inner spirit of the artist. Western art has developed in focus from the outside object to the inner consciousness of the artist’s mind.


Sample quotes and ideas. The ideas in bold-face print are my attempts to paraphrase the quote.

“…a peculiar morality and peculiar moral standards…directed to the good of the work, not of his soul.” [The artist’s morality is concerned only with achieving good work, not the good of his soul.] p. 37.


“…the creative intuition from which the whole work originates.” p. 40.


“…that art continues in its own way the labor of divine creation. It is therefore true to say with Dante that our human art is, as it were, the grandchild of God.” [Human art continues God’s creation.] p. 50.


“Modern art longs to be freed from reason (logical reason).” p. 51.


“…the progressive weakening of reason in modern times.” p. 51.


"Thus art enters the regions of obscurity…. Then art endeavors to get free from the intelligible or logical sense itself.” [The loss of rationality in art results in obscurity.] p. 54.


"The process I just described is a process of liberation from conceptual, logical, discursive reason.” p. 55.


Surrealism: "…the aim is to express ‘the real functioning of thought.’ ” [Virginia Woolf, James Joyce?] p. 59.


“The essential disinterestedness of the poetic act means that egoism is the natural enemy of poetic activity. The artist as a man can be busy only with his craving for creation.” [T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf all mentioned the need for the artist not to be dominated by one’s ego.] p. 107.


Thomas Aquinas: “The beautiful…is…that which being seen, pleases….” [The ‘beautiful’ defined.] p. 122.


“Only love and faith [not literature] allow us to get out of ourselves.” p. 139.


Malevich: “The appearances of natural objects…are in themselves meaningless; the essential thing is feeling” – feeling “completely independent of the context in which it has been evoked.” [Things are meaningless. It is only feeling that gives them meaning.] p. 160.


“But different in nature as they may be, poetic experience and mystical experience are born near one another….” [Poetic and mystical experience are closely related.] p. 178. ……….


“There is no poetic experience without a secret germ, tiny as it may be, of a poem. But there is no genuine poem which is not a fruit growing with inner necessity out of poetic experience.” [The poetic experience must have a germ of a poem, but it is the poetic experience that grows the poem.] p. 177.


To be continued.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (1)

Jacques Maritain. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. New York: Meridian Books. 1955.


An Experiment in Reading. I read this book as an experiment in reading. I had no interest in its topic. My sampling of its text showed me that it was incredibly dense and its sentences convoluted. The question I asked myself was this: what will happen if I use my method of reading, a method that helps to immerse me in books, even books as difficult as this one? I began by reading the first and last paragraphs of each chapter. And then I read one sentence a page through the entire book. Would I understand it? Would I become interested in its subject? What would I learn about creative intuition in art and poetry?


Draw you own conclusions.


Why read it? Creative intuition is the seed of art and poetry. Poetry is a process in communication between the artist and the inner spirit of the objects outside the artist. Oriental art concentrates on the inner spirit of the object, not the inner spirit of the artist. Western art has developed from the outside object to the inner consciousness of the artist’s mind.


Music is the greatest of arts because it goes beyond words to express the inexpressible.


Sample quotes and ideas. The ideas in bold-face print are my attempts to paraphrase the quote.


Art: “By art I mean the creative or producing, work-making activity of the human mind.” [Art: creative work of the mind.] p, 3.


“By poetry I mean, not the particular art which consists in writing verses, but a process both more general and more primary: that intercommunication between the inner being of things and the inner being of the human self which is a kind of divination…. Poetry, in this sense, is the secret life of each and all of the arts.” [Poetry does not mean writing verses; it’s intercommunication between the inner being of things outside of us and the inner being of the self. Therefore, poetry as Maritain defines it is the spirit or soul of all art.] p. 3.


“The Oriental artist would be ashamed of thinking of his ego and intending to manifest his own subjectivity in his work. His first duty is to forget himself. He looks at things, he meditates on the mystery of their visible appearance and on the mystery of their secret life force.” [The Oriental artist forgets himself and concentrates on the inner spirit of the things he observes.] p. 10.


“Better to say, a work of art is not simply an object fashioned by the artist and existing on its own. The work is brought to completion, the work exists, only when it is seen—as a meeting place where two minds (the artist’s and the beholder’s) join one another: it veritably exists only as a vehicle of actual ideal communication.” [A work of art is a vehicle for communication between the artist and the beholder.] p. 11.


Chinese art “…is a contemplative effort to discover in things and bring out from things their own engaged soul and inner principle of dynamic harmony, their ‘spirit,’ conceived as a kind of invisible ghost which comes down to them from the spirit of the universe and gives them their typical form of life and movement.” [Chinese art aims at the spirit which animates the things it observes and the artist contemplates.] p. 13.


“A…typical difference from Indian art appears in the major importance given by the Chinese artist to empty spaces, to silent times: because what matters above all is the power of suggestion of the work….” [For the Chinese artist, most important is the power of suggestion.] p. 14.


Oriental art is the opposite of Western individualism and never says, ‘I.’ It endeavors to hide the human self and to stare only at things…which reveals the secret meanings of things.” [From concentration on things to concentration on the subjective self of the artist.] p. 17.


“Western art has progressively laid stress on the artist’s self and, in its last phase, has plunged more and more deeply into the individual, incommunicable universe of creative subjectivity.” [The last phase is illustrated by Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.] p. 28.


To be continued.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The American Presidency (2)

Clinton Rossiter. New York: Time Incorporated. 1956/1963.


Why read it? The principal power of the President is to persuade people to do what they ought to do without persuasion (Harry Truman). The President is the image of the American people. He is Chief Diplomat. He is the Chief Democrat or Republican. He is crisis manager (“Words at times of crisis are deeds”). Must make final decisions. Can influence legislature, but has no power over the legislature. Has to persuade the federal agencies to carry out his policy. Must know the limits of his power and sense the possible or exhaust himself in trying to achieve the impossible.


Fixed term assures that the Presidency will not be a parliamentary-style government in which the Prime Minister can be dismissed at any time that the legislature takes a vote of “No confidence.”


Lincoln raised the Presidency to supreme manager of crisis government.


The Presidency is the answer to those who say democracies must fail because they can’t decide or act promptly.


There is a widening gap between what the people expect and what Presidents can produce.


The Presidency is the symbol of continuity and destiny.


Sample quotes and ideas:

“A man cannot possibly be judged a great President unless he holds office in great times: Washington’s eminence arose from the founding of the republic, Jackson’s from the upsurge in democracy, Lincoln’s from the Civil War, and Wilson’s from WWI.” p. 154. ……….


“A place at the top of the ladder is reserved only for those Presidents who have added to the office by setting precedents for other Presidents to follow.” p. 156. ……….


[FDR] “…demonstrated the ultimate capacity to dominate and control a supreme emergency….” p. 158. ……….


“…qualities that made FDR a man for posterity to remember: his buoyancy, which made it possible for him to love the job as no other President except the first Roosevelt had loved it…his breadth of vision…his delight in danger, which made him a natural leader for a generation whose lot was…’one damned crisis after another’…his sense of history…and his personal conservatism, which provided a solid base for his political liberalism.” p. 163.


“Harry S. Truman will be a well-remembered President because he proved that an ordinary man could fill the world’s most extraordinary office….” p. 173. ……….


“The memorable advice of Herbert Bayard Swope: ‘I don’t have a formula for success, but I know the sure formula for failure: try to please everybody.” p. 194. ……….


“…Eisenhower acted, however bravely he may have talked from time to time, like a man who preferred to let problems solve themselves.” p. 195. ……….


“…Presidents who really enjoy themselves in the White House, who welcome the challenges of the office as delightedly as they do the privileges.” p. 197.


“The real question about our Presidential primaries, it seems to me, is not whether they should take over completely the key role of the convention, which is an academic question at best, but whether they are worth all the fuss they cause in the minds of the public and all the strain they put upon even the most hard-shelled candidate: the active campaign for the Presidency becomes much too long drawn out a process; money becomes much too decisive a factor in the hopes and plans of any one candidate; some of the best candidates are torn between the responsibilities of the important positions they already fill and the lure of the one after which they hunger.” p. 214.


“The Presidency is a priceless symbol of our continuity and destiny as a people.” p. 295.


Comment: A book that presents the power and the limits of the Presidency. RayS.

Monday, June 22, 2009

The American Presidency (1)

Clinton Rossiter. New York: Time Incorporated. 1956/1963.


Why read it? The principal power of the President is to persuade people to do what they ought to do without persuasion (Harry Truman). The President is the image of the American people. He is Chief Diplomat. He is the Chief Democrat or Republican. He is crisis manager (“Words at times of crisis are deeds”). Must make final decisions. Can influence legislature, but has no power over the legislature. Has to persuade the federal agencies to carry out his policy. Must know the limits of his power and sense the possible or exhaust himself in trying to achieve the impossible.


Fixed term assures that the Presidency will not be a parliamentary style government in which the Prime Minister can be dismissed at any time that the legislature takes a vote of “No confidence.”


Lincoln raised the Presidency to supreme manager of crisis government.


The Presidency is the answer to those who say democracies must fail because they can’t decide or act promptly.


There is a widening gap between what the people expect and what Presidents can produce.


The Presidency is the symbol of continuity and destiny.


Sample quotes and ideas:

Harry Truman: “…but the principal power that the President has is to bring people in and try to persuade them to do what they ought to do without persuasion…what I spend most of my time doing…what the powers of the President amount to.” p. xi. ……….


The President, in short, is the one-man distillation of the American people….” p. 4. ……….


“ ‘Words at great moments of history are deeds,’ Clement Attlee said of Winston Churchill on the day the latter stepped down in 1945.” p. 23. ……….


“No man or combination of men in the United States can muster so quickly and authoritatively the troops, experts, food, money, loans, equipment, medical supplies, and moral support that may be needed in a disaster.” p. 24.


“Since it [the Presidency] is a one-man job, the one man who holds it can never escape making the final decisions….” p. 33. ……….


He [the President] has influence [on the legislature], and the influence may be great…but he has no power.” p. 47. ……….


"Several would doubtless go further to insist that the President’s hardest job is, not to persuade Congress to support a policy dear to his political heart, but to persuade the pertinent bureau or agency or mission, even when headed by men of his own choosing, to follow his direction faithfully and transform the shadow of the policy into the substance of a program.” p. 53.


FDR: “But the Treasury and the State Department are nothing compared with the Na-a-vy. To change anything in the Na-a-vy is like punching a feather bed; you punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching.” p. 54. ……….


“The President must enlist a great deal of private support among both management and labor if he is to make his authority as Manager of Prosperity felt…. “ p. 60. ……….


“If the President cannot judge the limits of his power…if he cannot sense the possible, he will exhaust himself attempting the impossible” p. 68.


To be continued.

Friday, June 19, 2009

American Humor (2)

American Humor: A Study of the National Character (2). Constance Rourke. Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. 1931.


Why read it? The two strains of American humor are the Yankee and the back woods. And both are a part of American character.


Sample quotes and ideas:

“Strange new words came rolling out of the West…absquatulate, slantendiculur, cahoots, catawampus, spyficated, flabbergasted, tarnacious, rampageous, concussence, supernatiousness, rumsquattle.” p. 58. ……….


“The feller looked as slunk in the face as a baked apple.” p. 63. ……….


“Those evasive dialogues by which the Yankee sought to learn everything and tell nothing….” p. 68.


“We Yankees…make our fortune with the right hand, and lose it with the left…. We Yankees don’t do things like you Britishers; we are in a hurry, educated at full speed, our spirit is at high pressure, and our life resembles a shooting star till death surprises us like an electric shock….” p. 66.


“Backwoods profusion was set against Yankee spareness.” p. 68.


“Triumph was in his [Negro] humor, but not triumph over circumstance.” p. 83.


“Laughter produced the illusion of leveling obstacles in a world which was full of unaccustomed obstacles.” p. 86.


“I drinks nothin’ but stump water and a rattlesnake bit me and died.” p. 88. ……….


“As a story teller, Lincoln used the entire native strain; he was consistently the actor, the mimic, the caricaturist.” p. 125. ……….


“In Lincoln two of the larger strains of American comedy seemed to meet…the western ebullience…but his economy of speech and his laconic turn seemed derived from the Yankee strain….” p. 127.


“…that compact turn with unspoken implications which is the essence of poetic expression.” p. 129. ……….


“In a sense the whole American comic tradition had been that of social criticism….” p. 168. ……….


“Repeatedly [Henry] James set the wickedness or subtlety or deceit of Europeans against American innocence.” p. 192.


Mark Twin: “The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French; the humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter…. The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it. The humorous story is strictly a work of art…and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and witty story, and anybody can do it.” p. 169.


Comment: The trouble with this book is that every time I hear something funny, I begin to analyze it to determine how it reflects American character. Takes all the fun out of laughing. RayS.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

American Humor (1)

American Humor: A Study of the National Character (1). Constance Rourke. Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. 1931.


Why read it? The two strains of American humor are the Yankee and the back woods. And both are a part of American character.


Sample quotes and ideas:

“There is scarcely any aspect of the American character to which humor is not related.” p. 9. ……….


“Listless and simple, he [the Yankee] might be drawn into a conversation with a stranger, and would tell a ridiculous story without apparent knowledge of its point.” p. 18. ……….


“Asked a question, he [the Yankee] was likely to counter with another. p. 18.


“Those bits of indirection were social; direct replies would end many a colloquy. Questions or evasions prolonged the talk and might open the way for more.” p. 18. ……….


“…as he [the Yankee] marshaled the characters in a story he was an actor and a troupe.” p. 18. ……….


“An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion….” p. 20.


“Brother Jonathan, an out-at-elbows New England country boy with short coat-sleeves, shrunken trousers and a blank countenance….” p. 21. ……….


“Brother Jonathan had in fact turned into Uncle Sam.” p. 25. ……….


“The contrast lay between an honest plain American and a silly, foppish…Englishman.” p. 24. ……….


“… the Briton, still wicked, still mannered and over-polished, either rich or nefariously seeking riches, and always defeated by simple rural folk to the accompaniment of loud laughter.” p. 25.


“Stories had always been a Yankee habit.” p. 27. ……….


“Yankee speech was not so much a dialect as a lingo: that is, its oddities were consciously assumed.” p. 28. ……….


Jack Downing [Seba Smith]…but beneath the placid stream of talk ran a drastic criticism of the Jacksonian democracy.” p. 29. ……….


“A barrier seemed to lie between the legendary Yankee and any effort to reach his inner character….” p. 35.


“A steamboat captain, once a flatboatman, finding that one of his men had been badly treated in a house on the river near New Orleans, fastened a cable round the pier on which the house rested, and starting the steamer, pulled it into the river drowning the inmates.” p. 40. ……….


“Probably the backwoodsman always kept a large blank gaze fixed upon the stranger as he polished his tales” p. 47. ……….


“He [Mike Fink] was in fact a Mississippi river-god, one of those minor deities whom men create in their own image and magnify to magnify themselves.” p. 52.


“If a fellow is born to be hung he will never be drowned.” p. 54. ……….


“…a long sequence of stories—chiefly hunting stories—in which the hunter killed or captured a bagful of game at a single stroke: in danger from the onslaught of a bear and a moose, he aimed at a sharp-edged rock; the split bullet killed both, and fragments of rock flew into a tree and killed a squirrel ; the recoil knocked him backward into a river; swimming to the shore, he found his coat full of trout and other fish flopped from his trousers.” p. 57.


To be continued.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby (Novel). F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1925 (1953.


Why read it: The American Dream? Success. Money. Beautiful women. Celebrity. Fitzgerald stripped away the hypocrisy of the American dream in this and his other novels. The results of this version of the American dream? A casket, a funeral and no mourners. “The poor son-of-a-bitch.”


“She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.” p. 149.


Sample quotes and ideas:

“Gatsby…an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person.” p. 2. ……….


“…but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.” p. 6. ……….


Daisy: “All right, I said, I’m glad it’s a girl…. I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” p. 17.


“I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited….. Sometimes the [guests] came and went without having met Gatsby at all…..” p. 41. ……….


“As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table—the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.” p. 42. ……….


“I turned again to my new acquaintance…. ‘This is an unusual party for me…. I haven’t even seen the host…. I live over there—‘ I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, ‘and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation.’ For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand. ‘I’m Gatsby,’ he said suddenly.” p. 48.


“…I like large parties; they’re so intimate; at small parties there isn’t any privacy.” p. 50. ……….


Gatsby: “ ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously; ‘Why of course you can!’ ” p. 111.


Daisy: “What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon…and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” p. 118.


“The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour, but it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.” p. 175. …………


“…and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower.” p. 176.


“The poor son-of-a-bitch….”p. 176.


“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….” p. 180.


“Probably it [a car over at Gatsby’s] was some final guest who had been away at the ends of the earth and didn’t know that the party was over.” p. 181.


“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” p. 182.


Comment: Fitzgerald captures the disillusion of the American dream. RayS.