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84d978c
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Over the years, Leila had come to believe that politicians were literally made of special stuff, chemically different stuff. The senator was flabby and bad-haired and acne-scarred and yet completely magnetic.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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f1cd1b2
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and so, in the very act of attacking the full story, Pip was somehow confirming its essential plausibility.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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261cc30
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her life was already so fraught with unpleasantnesses that she'd adopted the strategy of delaying encounters with them as long as possible, even when the delay made it likely that they would be even more unpleasant when she did encounter them.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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2283a8d
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So I envy animals. Dogs especially, because nothing smells bad to them.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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b0c979c
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Sometimes you imagine something for so long, you find that you have no choice but to do it.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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9c9c1c1
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How the hours can pass with mere kissing is lost to me now, along with the rest of my youth.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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aec2560
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It was like watching a pair of Hollywood execs abuse each other--you had to be powerful to take the abuse with a laugh.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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72a75be
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He was so immersed and implicated in the Internet, so enmeshed in its totalitarianism, that his online existence was coming to seem realer than his physical self.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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9a901b9
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Nature even on the most local of scales made a mockery of information technology. Even augmented by tech, the human brain was paltry, infinitesimal, in comparison to the universe.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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2a5a669
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With whiskey, the capillary bloom was more diffusely rosy than with gin and less purple than with wine. Every university dinner party was a study in blooms.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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a0675af
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Pithanon na khleuaze kapoion pou tha tou elege oti e agape mporouse na tou didaxei tis sugkekrimenes dexiotetes pou sunistoun ten upomone kai ten eusplakhnia kai sigoura opoion tha elege oti e agape einai enas khrusos krikos pou an ton adraxeis se paei psela, me mia duname sugkrisime monakha me tis dunameis tes phuses. Alla auto akribos eniothe tora
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Jonathan Franzen |
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3fd8155
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It was better to be angry than to be hurt; maybe even better than being loved and held by him, because maybe anger was what she'd been feeling toward him all along, anger disguised as wanting.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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58a0a89
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They rode an elevator in silence. Too-precipitous intimacy had left in its wake a kind of dirty awkwardness.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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546286d
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From somewhere, in college, Pip had gotten the idea--her mind was like a balloon with static cling, attracting random ideas as they floated by--that the height of civilization was to spend Sunday morning reading an actual paper copy of the Sunday New York Times at a cafe. This had become her weekly ritual, and, in truth,
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Jonathan Franzen |
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9e2b943
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available in the Republic had been paltry, a telephone, a flat with some air and light, the all-important permission to travel, but perhaps no paltrier than having x number of followers on Twitter, a much-liked Facebook profile, and the occasional four-minute spot on CNBC.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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ada9e62
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And the proof of his insanity? His belief that the U.S. government was a repressive conspiracy that muzzled radical opinion. Only an insane person would believe that! The Unabomber had really, really liked Leila.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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8d4531d
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Dogs again had it right. They didn't trouble themselves with mysteries that could never be solved anyway.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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19c2c63
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our culture attaches too much importance to feelings, he says it's out of control, it's not computers that are making everything virtual, it's mental health. Everyone's trying to correct their thoughts and improve their feelings and work on their relationships and parenting skills instead of just getting married and raising children like they used to,
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Jonathan Franzen |
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8549a1a
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It was heartbreaking to see old Ossis trying to ape the thinking of Wessis, trying to master the lingo of capitalist self-promotion.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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bdde2b1
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She'd visited the Continent five times on vacation and twice on business trips with Alfred, so about a dozen times altogether, and to friends planning tours of Spain or France she now liked to say, with a sigh, that she'd had her fill of the place.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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dff1afe
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the weekly thirty minutes of sexual stress was a chronic but low-grade discomfort, like the humidity in Florida
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irony
sex
marriage
obligation
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Jonathan Franzen |
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54194fb
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Sheets of rain were ripping themselves on the apple trees outside the window.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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7fbb727
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task
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Jonathan Franzen |
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9ff4dd2
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I get feminism as an equal-rights issue," he'd said to her once. "What I don't get is the theory. Whether women are supposed to be exactly the same as men, or different and better than men." And he'd laughed the way he did at things he found silly, and Leila had remained angrily silent, because she was a hybrid the other way around: conceptually a feminist but one of those women whose primary relationships had always been with men and who h..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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72f9b44
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In the elevator it seemed to Enid that the ship was suffering not only from a seesaw motion but also from a yaw, as if its bow were the face of someone experiencing repugnance.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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ec72445
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She felt as if, while working and sleeping and working and sleeping, she'd aged so rapidly that she'd passed Emile and caught up with her parents.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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ff11427
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Around her ribs and waist were curves of the kind that wind carves in snowdrifts.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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0bf9b5f
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Most of the lights were burning brightly, but near the center of the spool was a patch of unlit bulbs--a substantia nigra deep inside the tangle.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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31cd924
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She noted with pleasure that he'd already dispensed with a salutation,
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Jonathan Franzen |
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77fc152
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To love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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bc8584d
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the main form of family interaction was playing cards and board games, at which it was assumed that everyone was trying to cheat.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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af62c16
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In effetti quando faceva compere in un grande magazzino i vestiti e gli utensili che non le sembravano connotanti risultavano sempre i piu costosi nel loro genere. Chiaramente, se eri abbastanza ricco, potevi comprare la trasparenza.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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635919e
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Si rese conto di quanto dovessero essere nere le notti nel centro di una citta di duecento anni fa [...] e di come gli edifici potessero trovare riposo, ciechi ed esanimi come le persone addormentate al loro interno.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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f07ad7f
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gli parve di essere sbucato fuori non solo dagli acquitrini, ma anche dalla domenica, e di essere finito tra le dune di un ottavo, anonimo giorno della settimana che lui era l'unica persona al mondo a conoscere.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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c4fe8b5
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prairie
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Jonathan Franzen |
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165ead2
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If time was infinite, then three seconds and three years represented the same infinitely small fraction of it.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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20ca826
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Sleep was the ideally work-compatible girl he ought to have married in the first place. Perfectly submissive, infinitely forgiving, and so respectable you could take her to church.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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b195122
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how terrible the world was, what an eternal struggle for power. Secrets were power. Money was power. Being needed was power. Power, power, power: how could the world be organized around the struggle for a thing so lonely and oppressive in the having of it?
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Jonathan Franzen |
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b156fe4
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since a person couldn't exist in two places at once, the more he existed as the Internet's image of him, the less he felt like he existed as a flesh-and-blood person.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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7b6a1a2
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Filtering isn't phoniness--it's civilization.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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bc223dd
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Dad, Dad, Dad. What's wrong?" Alfred looked up at his son and into his eyes. He opened his mouth, but the only word he could produce was "I--" I-- I have made mistakes-- I am alone-- I am wet-- I want to die-- I am sorry-- I did my best-- I love my children-- I need your help-- I want to die-- "I can't be here," he said."
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Jonathan Franzen |
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79be793
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AT LEAST THE WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT IS GOING WELL.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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a44b34f
|
How, by the logic of addiction, could we not have proceeded to the needle and the vein?
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Jonathan Franzen |
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65791ca
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A drawback of email was that you could only delete it once: couldn't crumple it up, fling it to the floor, stomp on it, rip it to shreds, and burn it. Was there anything crueler, from the person who'd rejected you, than compassionate forbearance?
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Jonathan Franzen |