January 2013
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Best Reads of 2012
A writer friend of mine (Coene) did a best reads of 2012, and I think that after such an active year of reading wonderful literature, I ought to do the same. I read a lot last year. A LOT. Nine times out of ten, as soon as I finished the last page of one book, I searching my bookshelves and Kindle for the next read. I hit my goal of 40 books last year, but among them, these stood out as the...
December 2012
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From "The Adventures of Augie March," by Saul...
“Then she pointed. ‘Vous voyez les chiens?’ The dogs of the farm had leaped a brook and were dashing for us on the brown coat of the turf, yelling and yapping. ‘Don’t you worry about them,’ she said, picking up a branch. ‘They know me well.’ Sure enough they did.
They bounded into the air and licked her face.
The trouble was with the spark plugs,...
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From "The Adventures of Augie March," by Saul...
“O observation! We had our struggle on that very thing, it appears to me. The conversation with Thea about living in the eyes of others, I’ve reported. When has such damage been done by the gaze and so much awful despotism belonged to the eyes? Why, Cain was cursed between them so he would never be aware of his look in the view of other men. And police accompany accused and suspects to...
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From "The Adventures of Augie March," by Saul...
“But in this modern power of luxury, with its battalions of service workers and engineers, it’s the things themselves, the products that are distinguished, and the individual man isn’t nearly equal to their great sum. Finally they are what becomes great—the multitude of baths with never-failing hot water, the enormous air-conditioning units and the elaborate machinery. No...
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From "The Adventures of Augie March," by Saul...
“Anyhow, I had found something out about an unknown privation, and I realized how a general love or craving, before it is explicit or before it sees its object, manifests itself as boredom or some other kind of suffering. And what did I think of myself in relation to the great occasions, the more sizable being of these books? Why, I saw them, first of all. So suppose I wasn’t created...
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From "The Adventures of Augie March," by Saul...
“You can get along twenty-nine days with your trouble, but there’s always that thirtieth day when goddammit you can’t, when you feel like the stinking fly in the first cold snap, when you look about and think you’re the Old Man of the Sea locked around Sinbad’s neck…”
-From “The Adventures of Augie March,” by Saul Bellow
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From "The Adventures of Augie March," by Saul...
“I don’t know how she made out before, when we were alone after the desertion, but Grandma came and put a regulating hand on the family life. Mama surrendered power to her that maybe she had never known she had and took her punishment in drudgery; occupied a place, I suppose, among women conquered by a superior force of love, like those women whom Zeus got the better of in animal form...
November 2012
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From "The Adventures of Augie March," by Saul...
“Nobody asks you to love the whole world, only to be honest, ehrlich.”
-From “The Adventures of Augie March,” by Saul Bellow
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From "The Adventures of Augie March," by Saul...
“I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by...
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From "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,"...
“Just give us our due. I am bursting with hopes of a generation, their hopes surge through me, threaten to burst my hardened heart! Can you not see this? I am at once pitiful and monstrous, I know, and this is all my own making, I know—not the fault of my parents but of my own creation, yes, but I am a product of my environment, and thus representative, must be exhibited, as...
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From "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," by Milan...
“Tomas came to this conclusion: Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”
-From “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” by...
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From "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," by Milan...
“Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.”
From “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” by Milan Kundera
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“But for us life was a campaign. We moved mountains for those we loved…”
-From “Doctor Zhivago,” by Boris Pasternak
October 2012
31 posts
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“You and I are like Adam and Eve, the first two people on earth who at the beginning of the world had nothing to cover themselves with—and now at the end of it, we are just as naked and homeless. And you and I are the last remembrance of all that immeasurable greatness which has been created in the world in all the thousands of years between us and them, and it is in memory of all those vanished...
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“I don’t think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain about and nothing to regret. I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.”
-From “Doctor Zhivago,” by Boris Pasternak
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“Their love was great. Most people experience love without becoming aware of the extraordinary nature of this emotion. But to them—and this made them exceptional—the moments when passion visited their doomed human existence like a breath of eternity were moments of revelation, of continually new discoveries about themselves and life.”
-From “Doctor Zhivago,” by Boris Pasternak
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“Why are they so unconcerned? Guns are going off and people are dying, and they calmly prognosticate heat—not the heat of the battle but of the weather. Perhaps, after all, they have seen so much that they have no sensibility left.”
-From “Doctor Zhivago,” by Boris Pasternak
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“At such moments Yurii Andreievich felt he understood what it was that made these night shadows rustle and put their heads together, and what it was they whispered to each other, lazily stirring their leaves heavy with sleep, like faltering, lisping tongues. It was the very thing he was thinking of, turning restlessly in his berth—the tidings of the ever-widening circles of unrest and excitement...
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“It was partly the war, the revolution did the rest. The war was an artificial break in life—as if life could be put off for a time—what nonsense! The revolution broke out willy-nilly, like a sigh suppressed too long. Everyone was revived, reborn, changed, transformed. You might say that everyone has been through two revolutions—his own personal revolution as well as the general one. It seems to...
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the human wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion.”
From “Doctor Zhivago,” by Boris Pasternak
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“And it is this that makes the whole of life so terrifying. Does it crush you by thunder and lightning? No, by oblique glances and whispered calumny. It is all treachery and ambiguity. Any single thread is as fragile as a cobweb, but just try to pull yourself out of the net, you only become more entangled.”
From “Doctor Zhivago,” by Boris Pasternak
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“…[W]hat has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example.”
From “Doctor Zhivago,” by Boris Pasternak
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“Every motion in the world taken separately was calculated and purposeful, but, taken together, they were spontaneously intoxicated with the general stream of life which united them all. People worked and struggled, each set in motion by the mechanism of his own cares. But the mechanisms would not have worked properly had they not been regulated and governed by a higher sense of an ultimate...
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“Fields followed fields and were in turn lost in woods. These vast expanses gave him a feeling of freedom and elation. They made him think and dream of the future.”
From “Doctor Zhivago,” by Boris Pasternak
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From "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak
“It was almost as if the snowstorm had caught sight of Yura and, conscious of its power to terrify, roared and howled, doing everything possible to impress him. Turning over and over in the sky, length after length of whiteness unwound over the earth and shrouded it. The blizzard was alone in the world; it had no rival.”
From “Doctor Zhivago,” by Boris Pasternak
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From "Rosshalde," by Hermann Hesse
“And with relish he breathed the heady air of art, the bitter joy of the creator who must give himself till he stands on the brink of annihilation, and can find the sacred happiness of freedom only in an iron discipline that checks all caprice and gains moments of fulfillment only through ascetic obedience to his sense of truth.” -From “Rosshalde, by Hermann Hesse
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From "Gertrude," by Hermann Hesse
“I relapsed into a wonderful dreamlike state in which I built bold sound edifices, erected magnificent castles in the air, raised arches casting long shadows, and created musical patterns as light and delicate as soap bubbles.”
-From “Gertrude,” by Hermann Hesse
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From "Gertrude," by Hermann Hesse
“However eagerly I sought salvation, oblivion and deliverance in many other ways, however much I thirsted for God, understanding and peace, I always found them in music alone. It did not need to be Beethoven and or Bach: it has been a continual consolation to me and a justification for all life that there is music in the world, that one can at times be moved by rhythms and pervaded by...
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From "Demian," by Hermann Hesse
“The most primitive, even the wildest feelings were not directed at the enemy; their bloody task was merely an irradiation of the soul, of the soul divided within itself, which filled them with the lust to rage and kill, annihilate and die so that they might be born anew.”
From “Demian,” by Hermann Hesse
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From "Demian," by Hermann Hesse
“‘Love must not entreat,’ she added, ‘or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.’”
From “Demian,” by Hermann Hesse
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From "Demian," by Hermann Hesse
“‘Genuine communion,’ said Demian, ‘is a beautiful thing. but what we see flourishing everywhere is nothing of the kind. The real spirit will come from the knowledge that separate individuals have of one another and for a time it will transform the world. The community spirit at present is only a manifestation of the herd instinct. Men fly into each other’s arms...
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From "Demian," by Hermann Hesse
“At this point a sharp realization burned within me: each man has his ‘function’ but none which he can choose himself, define, or perform as he pleases. It is wrong to desire new gods, completely wrong to want to provide the world with something. An enlightened man had but one duty—to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter...
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From "Demian," by Hermann Hesse
“Everyone goes through this crisis. For the average person this is the point when the demands of his own life come into the sharpest conflict with his environment, when the way forward has to be sought with the bitterest means at his command. Many people experience the dying and rebirth—which is our fate—only this once during their entire life. Their childhood becomes hollow and...
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From "Demian," by Hermann Hesse
“There were times when I actually preferred living in the forbidden realm, and frequently, returning to the realm of light—necessary and good as it may have been—seemed almost like returning to something less beautiful, something rather drab and tedious.”
From “Demian,” by Hermann Hesse
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From "Demian," by Hermann Hesse
“Each man’s life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. yet each one strives to become that—one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. Each man carries the vestiges of his birth—the slime and eggshells of his primeval past—with him to...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“Then overwhelmed by the sense of that unknown infinity, like one bewildered by a strange persecution, confronting the shadows of night, in the presence of that impenetrable darkness, in the midst of the murmur of the waves, the swell, the foam, the breeze, under the clouds, under that vast diffusion of force, under that mysterious firmament of wings, of stars, of gulfs, having around him...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“…[H]e had found himself environed, and as it were possessed by solitude. This solitude more than surrounded, it enveloped him. A thousand menaces at once met him face to face. The wind was always there, ready to become furious; the sea, ready to roar. There was no stopping that terrible mouth the wind, no imprisoning that dread monster the sea. And yet he had striven, he, a solitary...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“The pressure of darkness acts in inverse proportion upon different kinds of natures. In the presence of night man feels his own incompleteness. He perceives the dark void and is sensible of infirmity. It is like the vacancy of blindness. Face to face with night, man bends, kneels, prostrates himself, crouches on the earth, crawls toward a cave, or seeks for wings. Almost always he shrinks...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“Ordinarily the sea conceals her crimes. She delights in privacy. Her unfathomable deeps keep silence. She wraps herself in a mystery which rarely consents to give up its secrets. We know her savage nature, but who can tell the extent of her dark deeds? She is at once open and secret; she hides away carefully, and cares not to divulge her action; wrecks a vessel, and, covering it with the...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“This kind of rocks, which in the old sea dialect were called Isoles, are, as we have said, strange places. The sea is alone there; she works her own will. No token of terrestrial life disturbs her. Man is a terror to the sea; she is shy of his approach, and hides from him her deeds. But she is bolder among the lone sea rocks. The everlasting soliloquy of the waves is not troubled there. She...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“There is a degree of overwhelmment which abstracts the mind entirely from its fellowship with man. The forms which come and go within your room become confused and indistinct. They pass by, even touch you, but never really come near you. You are far away; inaccessible to them, as they to you. The intensities of joy and despair differ in this. In despair, we take cognizance of the world only...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none.”
From “The Toilers of the Sea,” by Victor Hugo
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“There, at a depth to which divers would find it difficult to descend, are caverns, haunts, and dusky mazes, where monstrous creatures multiply and destroy each other. Huge crabs devour fish and are devoured in their turn. Hideous shapes of living things, not created to be seen by human eyes wander in this twilight. Vague forms of antennae, tentacles, fins, open jaws, scales, and claws,...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“Every scientific discovery in embryo presents that double aspect—a monster in the foetus, a marvel in the germ.”
From “The Toilers of the Sea,” by Victor Hugo
September 2012
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“The human body might well be regarded as a mere simulacrum; but it envelops our reality, it darkens our light, and broadens the shadow in which we lie. The soul is the reality of our existence. Strictly speaking, the human visage is a mask. The true man is that which exists under what is called a man. If that being, which thus exists sheltered and secreted behind that illusion which we call...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“The world of sleep has an existence of its own. Night-time, regarded as a separate sphere of creation, is a universe in itself. the material nature of man, upon which philosophers tell us that a column of air forty-five miles in height continually presses, is wearied out at night, sinks into lassitude, lies down, and finds repose. The eyes of the flesh are closed; but in that drooping head,...
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
“‘In order to be sure that it is your husband by your side and not a demon, place your hand upon his head. If you find horns, you may be sure there is something wrong.’ But this test was far from satisfactory to the worthy dame.”
-From “The Toilers of the Sea,” by Victor Hugo
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From "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo
(Standard Book Company, 1931)
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From "A Man in Full," by Tom Wolfe
“One of the few freedoms that we have as human beings that cannot be taken away from us is the freedom to assent to what is true and to deny what is false. Nothing you can give me is worth surrendering that freedom for. At this moment I’m a man with complete tranquillity…I’ve been a real estate developer for most of my life, and I can tell you that a developer lives with...
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From "1Q84," by Haruki Murakami
“‘Ho ho,’ said the keeper of the beat.”
