Browse by:

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (14)

More frightened than ever, I begged him not to apply the leeches. Then, quite calmly, he told me that the orderly had surely already applied them, because he had given the man instructions before leaving my father’s room. I became angry. Could anything be more wicked than recalling a sick man to consciousness, without the…

The Moviegoer: quotes (16)

What is the malaise? you ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost. You say it is a simple thing surely,…

A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (15)

I may have some valuable insights which may benefit my employer. Perhaps the experience can give my writing a new dimension. Being actively engaged in the system which I criticize will be an interesting irony in itself. 30% discount code available here a confederacy of duncesJohn Kennedy Toolenew orleansphilosophy and literature

Interpreting Italo Svevo: When Literary Orthodoxy Misses The Mark

Dario Maestripieri in Quillette. Literary studies has for several decades been given over to theory-saturated “activism masquerading as inquiry.” It’s self-aggrandizing political and identitarian Newspeak, as the late D. G. Myers put it, is “a caterwaul of screeching, dogmatic ‘movements.’ Neither method nor logic unites them.” Both Freudians and Marxists have missed the mark on…

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (13)

Weeping obscures our guilt and allows us to accuse fate, without contradiction. I wept because I was losing the father for whom I had always lived. No matter that I had given him scant company. Hadn’t my efforts to become a better man been aimed at affording him some satisfaction? The success I yearned for…

The Moviegoer: quotes (15)

Being a creature of habit, as regular as a monk, and taking pleasure in the homeliest repetitions, I listen every night at ten to a program called This I Believe. Monks have their compline, I have This I Believe. On the program hundreds of the highest minded people in our country, thoughtful and intelligent people,…

Yukio Mishima: The Death of a Man

This photo-essay by photographer Kishin Shinoyama is the first of what I anticipate will be a flurry of publications marking, come November, fifty years since Mishima’s death. JapanKishin Shinoyamaphilosophical literaturephotographyYukio Mishima

A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (14)

“You realize, of course, that this is all your fault. The progress of my work will be greatly delayed. I suggest that you go to your confessor and make some penance, Mother. Promise him that you will avoid the path of sin and drinking in the future. Tell him what the consequence of your moral…