Bits of Books You Like

[Kinbote]

A new thread for our half-dead board. Another passage post. Go at it, fellows.

[Kinbote]

During the ten years that were to elapse between Hugh Person’s first and second visits to Switzerland he earned his living in the various dulls ways that fall to the lot of brilliant young people who lack any special gift or ambition and get accustomed to applying only a small part of ther wits to humdrum or charlatan tasks. What they do with the other, much greater, portion, how and where their real fancies and feelings are housed, is not exactly a mystery—there are no mysteries now—but would entail explications and revelations too sad, too frightful, to face. Only experts, for experts, should probe a mind’s mystery.

He could multiply eight-digit numbers in his head, and lost that capacity in the course of a few gray diminishing nights during hospitalization with a virus infection at twenty-five. He had published a poem in a college magazine, a long rambling piece that began rather auspiciously:

“Blest are suspension dots…The sun was setting a heaveny example to the lake…”

He was the author of a letter to the London Times which was reproduced a few years later in the anthology To the Editor: Sir, and a passage of which read:

“Anacreon died at eighty-five choked by ‘wine’s skeleton’ (as another Ionian put it), and a gypsy predicted to the chessplayer Alyokhin that he would be killed in Spain by a dead bull.”

For seven years after graduating from the university he had been the secretary and anonymous associate of a notorious fraud, the late symbolist Atman, and was wholly responsible for such footnotes as:

“The cromlech (associated with mleko, milch, milk) is obviously a symbol of the Great Mother, just as the menhir (‘mein Herr’) is as obviously masculine.”

He had been in the stationery business for another spell and a fountain pen he had promoted bore his name: The Person Pen. But that remained his greatest achievement.

[Nak Nak]

Ah, Osiria! Ancient enemy of Atlantis, saviour of Europe and Africa, and all who dwelt between the pillars! Once the fertile breadbasket of the world, now sunken beneath thousands of feet of saltwater in the same cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis and the rest of the antediluvian world.

[Peter]

"Darling, why whould I be worried? The only time I ever felt badly was when I felt like a whore in Milan and that only lasted seven minutes and besides, it was the room furnishings. Don't I make you a good wife?"

[Barbarian Love Elephant]

''Could this have been love? Grant it to be one form of love, for even though at first glance it seemed to retain its pristine form forever, simply repeating that form over and over again, it too had its own unique sort of debasement and decay. And it was a debasement more evil that that of any normal kind of love. Indeed, of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.

Nevertheless, in my unrequited love for Omi, in this the first love I encountered in life, I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire for possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself.

To say the least, while at school, particularly during a boring class, I could not take my eyes off Omi’s profile. What more could I have done when I did not know that to love is both to seek and to be sought? For me love was nothing but a dialogue of little riddles, with no answers given. As for my spirit of adoration, I never even imagined it to be a thing that required some sort of answer.''

[aria]

"Darling, why whould I be worried? The only time I ever felt badly was when I felt like a whore in Milan and that only lasted seven minutes and besides, it was the room furnishings. Don't I make you a good wife?"


the sun also rises?

[Peter]

the sun also rises?

A Farewell To Arms

[Noshus Klam]

I just recently read 1984 again, here's some quotes that stuck with me,


# "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past"

# "Orthodoxy means not thinking- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

# "So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing."

# "Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter."

# "...the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war."

# "Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly."

# "The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they will never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed."

# "Sanity is not statistical"

# "...no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard as revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship."

[Intern Kate]

i'm a big vagina-brain! you should be too.

He insisted in a fierce whisper—fully knowing, however,
how useless it was to attempt to make her change her mind,
particularly in amorous matters; but unaccountably and mar-
velously her dazed look melted into one of gentle glee, as if in sudden perception of new-found release. Thus a child may
stare into space, with a dawning smile, upon realizing that the
bad dream is over, or that a door has been left unlocked, and
that one can paddle with impunity in thawed sky. Ada rid her
shoulder of the collecting satchel and, under Violette's benevolent gaze following them over Marina's mirrored head, they
strolled away and sought the comparative seclusion of the park
alley where she had once demonstrated to him her sun-and-shade
games. He held her, and kissed her, and kissed her again as if
she had returned from a long and perilous journey. The sweetness of her smile was something quite unexpected and special.
It was not the sly demon smile of remembered or promised
ardor, but the exquisite human glow of happiness and helpless-
ness. All their passionate pump-joy exertions, from Burning
Barn to Burnberry Brook, were nothing in comparison to this zaychik, this "sun blick" of the smiling spirit. Her black jumper
and black Skirt with apron pockets lost its "in-mourning-for-a-
lost flower" meaning that Marina had fancifully attached to her
dress ("nemedlenno pereodet'sya, change immediately!" she had
yelped into the green-shimmering looking-glass); instead, it had acquired the charm of a Lyaskan, old-fashioned schoolgirl uni-
form. They stood brow to brow, brown to white, black to
black, he supporting her elbows, she playing her limp light
fingers over his collarbone, and how he "ladored," he said, the
dark aroma of her hair blending with crushed lily stalks, Turk-
ish cigarettes and the lassitude that comes from "lass." "No, no,
don't," she said, I must wash, quick-quick, Ada must wash; but
for yet another immortal moment they stood embraced in the
hushed avenue, enjoying, as they had never enjoyed before, the
"happy-forever" feeling at the end of never-ending fairy tales.
That's a beautiful passage, Van. I shall cry all night (late
interpolation).

and at chapter's end:

"I found this in my jacket," said Van.
Rubbing her big front teeth with a nervous forefinger, Ada
read and reread the note.
"How do you know it's meant for you?" she asked, giving
him back the bit of copybook paper.
"Well, I'm telling you," he yelled.
"Tishe (quiet!)!" said Ada.
"I'm telling you I found it here," (pointing at his heart).
"Destroy and forget it," said Ada.
"Your obedient servant," replied Van.





oh crap!

[Kinbote]

That Boyd book has given me a new appreciation of

Stumbling on melons, fiercely beheading the tall arrogant fennels with his riding crop, Van returned to the Forest Fork. Morio, his favorite black horse, stood waiting for him, held by young Moore. He thanked the groom with a handful of stellas and galloped off, his gloves wet with tears.

[motorcyclemptiness]

In a nearby room in the Principe di Savoia a propmaster is loading a 9mm mini-Uzi.

[Nak Nak]

Oh come, art cannot hurt.
It can, and how!

[Squirrel]

I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.

[Noshus Klam]

All from Burmese Days by Orwell.

"Envy is a horrible thing. It is unlike all other kinds of suffering in that there is no disguising it, no elevating it into tragedy. It is more than merely painful, it is disgusting."

"In fact they say-I believe it's true-that after a few years in these countries a brown skin seems more natural than a white one. And after all, it is more natural. Take the world as a whole, it's an eccentricity to be white."

"Hanging together, we call it. It's a political necessity. Of course drink is what keeps the machine going. We should all go mad and kill one another in a week if it weren't for that. There's a subject for one of your uplift essayists, doctor. Booze as the cement of empire."

[bijaz]

Ari woke up at the Minder-call, remembered what she had done last night, and lay there for a minute remembering.
A little scared. A little sore. It had not been quite like the tapes-like real-life, a little awkward. But someone had said- the tape, she thought-that happens; even sex takes practice.
So they were twelve pushing thirteen real hard. Which was young. Her body wasn't through growing, Florian's wasn't. She knew that made a difference.
The tape had said so. "Does Ari have any reference on sex?" Ari asked Base One.
But Base One only gave her the same thing it had always given, and she had read that so often she had it memorized.
She had been irresponsible, completely, last night, that was what kept eating at her. She could have hurt them, and the worst thing was she still could: this morning she was still on, -a whole lot cooler and calmer, but sex was just like the tape, hard to remember what it felt like the minute it was over, a damn cheat, leaving just a curiosity, something you kept picking at like a fool picking at a scab to see if it hurt-again.
It was hard to remember a whole lot of things when that got started.
Like responsibility. Like people you cared about.
Like who you were.

[Squirrel]

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.... And that, I think, was the handle --- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting --- on our side or theirs.We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

[The Tourist]

Michael and Tammy had taken turns shitting on Lucius. They were fortunate that they both had lots of small, rabbit-like shit in them, it meant that the process lasted a little longer and that Lucius stayed alert. When they had finally depleted their stocks they let him stand up, he turned to them and thanked them before dunking his head in the toilet bowl. Later, at dinner, they cursed the waiters and talked about Bavarian folk dancing. They ate risotto.

[Nak Nak]

"No!" she said, laughing. But her eyes were a little big. Her fingers played with his watch-chain. "I'd rather," she said presently, "you went later on and took me. All this is so odd still: the House, and that; and I love it so. And after all, it is a long way and several years too, sometimes, in the Lotus Room, even though it is all over next morning. I'd rather we went together. If anything happened then, well, we'd both be done in, and it wouldn't matter so much, would it?"

"Both be what?" said Lessingham. "I'm afraid your language is not all that might be wished."

"Well, you taught me!" said she; and they laughed.

[Narcissistic Nihilist]

"If that's the way you are going to behave" he said to his imagination, "I won't invite you next time"

[Intern Kate]

She must be off on a country weekend. Or visiting the boy at school. Or vanished like a good paragraph in a book too bulky to reread.

AND FOR KICKS:

That unreality had swept in. It was his fault; he had wanted to be noticed, to be praised. He had wanted to be a man in the world, a "writer." For his punishment they had made from sticks and mud of his words a coarse large doll to question and torment, which would not have mattered except that he was trapped inside the doll, shared a name and bank account with it. And the life that touched and brushed other people, that played across them like a saving breeze, could not break through the crust to him. He was, with all his brave talk to Tuttle of individual intelligence and the foolishness of groups, too alone.