A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (33)

At least its climate is mild; too, it is here in the Crescent City that I am assured of having a roof over my head and a Dr. Nut in my stomach, although certain sections of North Africa [Tangiers, etc.] have from time to time excited my interest. The voyage by boat, however, would probably enervate me, and I am certainly not perverse enough to attempt air travel even if I were able to afford it. The Greyhound Bus Line is sufficiently menacing to make me accept my status quo. I wish that those Scenicruisers would be discontinued; it would seem to me that their height violates some interstate highway statute regarding clearance in tunnels and so forth. Perhaps one of you, dear readers, with a legal turn of mind can dredge the appropriate clause from memory. Those things really must be removed. Simply knowing that they are hurtling somewhere on this dark night makes me most apprehensive.

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Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (32)

She said: “You, Zeno, need a woman who wants to live for you and help you. I want to be that woman.” She held out her plump hand, which I kissed, as if by instinct. Obviously it was impossible to do anything else. I must then confess that at that moment I was filled with a contentment that made my breast swell. I no longer had to resolve anything, because everything had been resolved. This was true clarity.

John Le Carré on Israel

Israel is “The most extraordinary carnival of human variety that I have ever set eyes on, a nation in the process of re-assembling itself from the shards of its past, now Oriental, now Western, now secular, now religious, but always anxiously moralizing about itself, criticizing itself with Maoist ferocity, a nation crackling with debate, rediscovering its past while it fought for its future. No nation on earth was more deserving of peace — or more condemned to fight for it”.

Obits in The Guardian — LA Times

A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (32)

Although residing along the Mississippi River [This river is famed in atrocious song and verse; the most prevalent motif is one which attempts to make of the river an ersatz father figure. Actually, the Mississippi River is a treacherous and sinister body of water whose eddies and currents yearly claim many lives. I have never known anyone who would even venture to stick his toe in its polluted waters, which seethe with sewage, industrial waste, and deadly insecticides. Even the fish are dying. Therefore, the Mississippi as Father-God-Moses-Daddy-Phallus-Pops is an altogether false motif began, I would imagine, by that dreary fraud, Mark Twain. This failure to make contact with reality is, however, characteristic of almost all of America’s “art.” Any connection between American art and American nature is purely coincidental, but this is only because the nation as a whole has no contact with reality. That is only one of the reasons why I have always been forced to exist on the fringes of its society, consigned to the Limbo reserved for this who do know reality when they see it.] . . . The only excursion in my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge. In some future installment, a flashback, I shall perhaps recount that pilgrimage through the swamps, a journey into the desert from which I returned broken physically, mentally, and spiritually. New Orleans, is on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive.

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Symposium on Brian A. Smith’s Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer

Freely available here

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (31)

You mustn’t take offense, Zeno, because that would grieve me. I know you’re a good sort and you know many things, without knowing it, whereas my professors know exactly what they know.