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9f4c277
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Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her...and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being.
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love
funhouse
girl
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John Barth |
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2c313ae
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My dear fellow,' Burlingame said, 'we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careening into time forever. Not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already..
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John Barth |
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f5e3d2b
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The reader! You, dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else, from inside this monstrous fiction. You've read me this far, then? Even this far? For what discreditable motive? How is it you don't go to a movie, watch TV, stare at a wall, play tennis with a friend, make amorous advances to the person who comes to your mind when I speak of amorous advances? Can nothing surfeit, saturate you, turn you off? Wh..
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reading
passion
biblioholism
addicts
readers
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John Barth |
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a8a3632
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He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator -- though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.
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life
love
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John Barth |
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ef84b50
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All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate.
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John Barth |
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9d118a2
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Self knowledge is always bad news.
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John Barth |
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de422b0
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Nobody knew how to be what they were right.
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John Barth |
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e5d40c5
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How come you write the way you do?" an apprentice writer in my Johns Hopkins workshop once disingenuously asked Donald Barthelme, who was visiting. Without missing a beat, Don replied, "Because Samuel Beckett was already writing the way does." Asked another, smiling but serious, "How can we become better writers than we are?" "Well," DB advised, "for starters, read through the whole history of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics up through..
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John Barth |
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6e7c547
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I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me's no joke.
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paradox
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John Barth |
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183c98b
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It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art.
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John Barth |
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945f48e
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Indeed, if I have yet to join the hosts of the suicides, it is because (fatigue apart) I find it no meaningfuller to drown myself than to go on swimming.
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John Barth |
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cc03cd4
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path's should be laid where people walk, instead of walking where paths are laid-
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John Barth |
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eb197fe
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I have remarked elsewhere that I regard the Almighty as not a bad novelist, except that He is a realist.
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John Barth |
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b132336
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Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.
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John Barth |
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62b1b3d
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Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?
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John Barth |
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69db344
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The difference here 'twixt simple and witty folk, if the truth be known, is that your plain man cares much for what stand ye take and not a fart for why ye take it, while your smart wight leaves ye whate'er stand ye will, sobeit ye defend it cleverly.
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John Barth |
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c121d43
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Articulation! There, by Joe, was MY absolute, if I could be said to have one. At any rate, it is the only thing I can think of about which I ever had, with any frequency at all, the feelings one usually has for one's absolutes. To turn experience into speech - that is, to classify, to categorize, to conceptualize, to grammarize, to syntactify it - is always a betrayal of experience, a falsification of it; but only so betrayed can it be deal..
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John Barth |
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2a455cf
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When you look at this mirror I hope you'll remember that there's always another way of seeing things: that's the beginning of wisdom.
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John Barth |
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9bcd586
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Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius's point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark. He didn't think he was a minor character in anything, I daresay.
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John Barth |
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e30ece1
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a man's most useful friend and fearsome foe is the poet.
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John Barth |
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36db8ce
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Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way?
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John Barth |
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e04b958
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There was some simple, radical difference about him. He hoped it was genius, feared it was madness, devoted himself to amiability and inconspicuousness.
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John Barth |
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d63dc34
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Ah, God, it were an easy Matter to choose a Calling had one all Time to live in! I should be fifty Years a Barrister, fifty a Physician, fifty a Clergyman, fifty a Soldier! Aye, and fifty a Thief, and fifty a Judge! All Roads are fine Roads, beloved Sister, none more than another, so that with one Life to spend I am a Man bare-bumm'd at Taylors with Cash for but one pair of Breeches, or a Scholar at Brookstalls with Money for a single Book:..
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john-barth
vocation
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John Barth |
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abf4f95
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Others live for the lie of love; Echo lives for her lovely lies, loves for their livening.
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pleasure-principle
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John Barth |
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17faceb
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So, reader, should you ever find yourself writing about the world, take care not to nibble at the many tempting symbols she sets squarely in your path, or you'll be baited into saying things you don't really mean, and offending the people you want most to entertain. Develop, if you can, the technique of the pall bearers and myself: smile, to be sure -- for fucking dogs are truly funny -- but walk on and say nothing, as though you hadn't not..
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John Barth |
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1a142bd
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Unhappily, things get clearer as we go along. I perceive that I have no body. What's less, I've been speaking of myself without delight or alternative as self-consciousness pure and sour; I declare now that even that isn't true. I'm not aware of myself at all, as far as I know. I don't think. . . I know what I'm talking about.
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John Barth |
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aefe25c
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T]he world is richer in associations than meanings . . . and it is the part of wisdom to distinguish between the two.
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wisdom
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John Barth |
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1e67e02
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There is no way to master the fact with which I live.
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John Barth |
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8484a15
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more exactly in storymaking, ... Aristotle declares in effect that since real life now and then includes unlikely coincidences both idle and consequential ... a storymaker may legitimately deploy such a possible-though-improbable happenstance to begin the tale or to give its plot-screws an early turn. Thereafter, however, the Plausible (even when strictly impossible) is ever to be preferred to the Possible-but-Unlikely; and in the of a pl..
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John Barth |
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c0c339a
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Now many crises in people's lives occur because the hero role that they've assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or-the same thing in effect-because they haven't the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situatio..
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mythotherapy
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John Barth |
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14ba0b3
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innocence is ignorance; ignorance is illusion; and Commencement, while it certainly is a metaphor, is no illusion. Commencement's for the disillusioned, not for the innocent.
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John Barth |
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c10440d
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remember that there's always another way of seeing things: that's the beginning of wisdom.
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John Barth |
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72efa57
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Too late she saw: what she'd favored him with in jest he had received with adoration.
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John Barth |
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be924b7
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the enemy you flee is not exterior to yourself
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happy-playgrounds
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John Barth |
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0169f27
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And never mind that the lessons he meant to be helpful, his students always make people miserable with, and flunk anybody that disagrees with them!
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prophets
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John Barth |
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56e1e36
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The nightsea journey may be absurd, but here we swim, will-we nill-we, against the flood, onward and upward, toward a shore that may not exist and couldn't be reached if it did.
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John Barth |
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55992ab
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May I recommend three Maryland beaten biscuits, with water, for your breakfast? They are hard as a haul-seiner's conscience and dry as a dredger's tongue, and they sit for hours in your morning stomach like ballast on a tender ship's keel. They cost little, are easily and crumblessly carried in your pockets, and if forgotten and gone stale, are neither harder nor less palatable than when fresh. What's more, eaten first thing in the morning ..
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maryland
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John Barth |
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53ec300
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Although my law practice pays my hotel bill, I consider it no more my career than a hundred other things: sailing, drinking, walking the streets, writing my 'Inquirey', starting at walls hunting ducks and 'coons,reading, playing politics, and whatnot. I'm interested in any number of things, and enthusiastic about nothing.
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John Barth |
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d4347a6
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beg Love's pardon for your want of faith. Helen chose you without reason because she loves you without cause; embrace her without question and watch your weather change.
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John Barth |
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6697787
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So, I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you prefer, begin it by reminding myself that, for me at least, goals and objectives are without value, and close it by demonstrating that the fact is irrelevant. A gesture of temporality, a gesture of eternity. It is in the tension between these two gestures that I have lived my adult life.
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John Barth |
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3d952e4
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people still fall in love, and out, yes, in and out, and out and in, and they please each other, and hurt each other, isn't that the truth, and they do these things in more or less conventionally dramatic fashion, unfashionable or not, go on, I'm going, and what goes on between them is still not only the most interesting but the most important thing in the bloody murderous world
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love
truth
hurt
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John Barth |
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75efaef
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Non c'era ragione di far niente. I miei occhi, come Winckelmann diceva impropriamente delle statue greche, erano senza sguardo, fissi all'eternita, puntati al fine ultimo, e quando cosi stanno le cose non c'e ragione di far nulla, nemmeno di aggiustare il fuoco dei propri occhi. Il che forse e la ragione per cui le statue stanno ferme. Mi aveva colpito la malattia "cosmopsis", la vista cosmica. Quando uno ha questa malattia si irrigidisce c..
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John Barth |
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bceea51
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Let your repentance salt my shoe leather," I said presently, "and then, as I lately sheathed my blade of anger, so sheath you my blade of love."
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John Barth |
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ca15d7f
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En ningun caso, solia insistir, comprendian los magos necesariamente su arte, a pesar de que la experiencia lo habia llevado a un par de conclusiones generales sobre el tema. Por ejemplo, que cada vez que aprendia algo nuevo sobre sus poderes, esos poderes disminuian, o en todo caso, quedaban alterados.
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quimera
magia
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John Barth |