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0ef06af
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he was a lonely straight male, and a lonely straight male had no equivalently forgiving Theory of Masculinism to help him out of this bind, this key to all misogynies: To feel as if he couldn't survive without a woman made a man feel weak; And yet, without a woman in his life, a man lost the sense of agency and difference that, for better or worse, was the foundation of his manhood.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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9c37e9a
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Nuestras vidas parecen mucho mas interesantes cuando las filtramos a traves de la interfaz sexy de facebook. Somos protagonistas de nuestras propias peliculas, nos fotografiamos incesantemente, basta un clic del raton y una maquina nos confirma nuestra sensacion de dominio. Y como nuestra tecnologia solo es en realidad una prolongacion de nosotros, no tenemos que despreciarla por ser tan manipulable, como podria ocurrirnos con las personas ..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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a3bdeff
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It had to be possible to do better than her parents, but she wasn't sure she would.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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acb7cc8
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There were a thousand things she wanted from life, and since few were available at home [...], she had forcibly channeled all her wanting into the numbered days, the mayfly lifetime, that the luxury cruise would last. For months the cruise had been her mind's safe parking space, the future that made her present bearable [...].
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Jonathan Franzen |
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5846547
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Their marriages had been Old Testament, hers a matter of honoring her covenant with Charles, Tom's a matter of fearing Anabel's wrath and judgement. In the New Testament, the only things that mattered were love and free will.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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51a3fcf
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It's nice to be able to control my smell environment, and I can hear myself think better when it's quiet. It wasn't easy to become a person who's OK being alone on a Saturday night, but I did the work, I got there...
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Jonathan Franzen |
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355a510
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Finally there came a perfect storm of drafts from uptown and downtown, a big humid uric wind that swept the platform and then reversed itself, and reversed itself again, so that the dollar bills came levitating out of the guitar case and drifted up and down the platform like leaves in autumn, tumbling and skidding, while the band played on. It was perfectly beautiful and perfectly sad, and everybody on the platform knew it, nobody bent down..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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1059b54
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I may be dead tomorrow, I said to myself, but
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Jonathan Franzen |
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2b7f201
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There's a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else's work in the morning; it's as if stillness experiences pain in being broken. The first minute of the workday reminds you of all the other minutes that a day consists of, and it's never a good thing to think of minutes as individuals. Only after other minutes have joined the naked, lonely first minute does the day become more safely integrated in its dayness. Patty waited for t..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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e0bedcc
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It's a country of big children, people being naughty behind the teacher's back, people tattling on each other, people getting their dumb certificates for being good socialists. People submitting to the system because they're German and because it's a system. The whole thing was stupid and a lie. But they're not arrogant, not know-it-alls. They give what they have and they take me the way I am.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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8225d45
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Niama po-sigurna pobeda nad bashchata ot sm'rtta.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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cbd87bd
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Hell-o-oh," she called with the silly lilt with which she and Tom announced arrivals. "Hello," Tom called from the living room, without the lilt."
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Jonathan Franzen |
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665f825
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It occurred to her to drive to Grand Rapids and buy some actual wine. It occurred to her to drive back to the house without buying anything at all. But then where would she be? A weariness set in as she stood and vacillated: a premonition that none of the possible impending outcomes would bring enough relief or pleasure to justify her current heart-racing wretchedness. She saw, in other words, what it meant to have become a deeply unhappy p..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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f49ed1a
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I'm just happy you're home safely.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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0f276f1
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La brezza fredda e il fumo della Camel si mescolavano come gioia e rimorso.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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f4e7187
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Ma ora si rendeva conto che quello, come tradimento, era cosi piccolo che faceva ridere. Cosi piccolo che faceva piangere.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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2734374
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Per me, - disse Walter, - la differenza e che gli uccelli uccidono perche devono mangiare. Non lo fanno con rabbia, non lo fanno senza motivo. Non e una cosa nevrotica. Per me e questo che rende la natura un luogo pacifico. Le cose vivono o non vivono, ma non esiste il veleno del risentimento, della nevrosi e dell'ideologia. E un sollievo dalla mia rabbia nevrotica
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Jonathan Franzen |
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d244bd4
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El sol bajo, en el cielo: luminaria menor, estrella enfriandose. Rafagas de desorden, sucesivas. Arboles inquietos, temperaturas en descenso,
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Jonathan Franzen |
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367c5f2
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Hour after hour, my father lay unmoving and worked his way toward death; but when he yawned, the yawn was his. And his body, wasted though it was, was likewise still radiantly his.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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8ef38ed
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L'America, [...] il paese della liberta, il luogo dei grandi spazi aperti dove un figlio poteva ancora sentirsi speciale. Niente, pero, disturba questa sensazione quanto la presenza di altri esseri umani che si sentono altrettanto speciali.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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830e0cb
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She reshelved the sixpack and wrenched herself away to less compelling parts of the store, but it was hard to plan dinner when you felt like throwing up. She returned to the beer shelves like a bird repeating its song. The various beer cans had different decorations but all contained the identical weak low-end brew. It occurred to her to drive to Grand Rapids and buy some actual wine. It occurred to her to drive back to the house without bu..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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4f3b082
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La differenza e che gli uccelli uccidono solo perche devono mangiare. Non lo fanno con rabbia, non lo fanno senza motivo. Non e una cosa nevrotica. Per me e questo che rende la natura un luogo pacifico. Le cose vivono o non vivono, ma non esiste il veleno del risentimento, della nevrosi e dell'ideologia. E un sollievo dalla mia rabbia nevrotica.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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a3c611e
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Joey aveva sorriso con furia per impedirsi di piangere. La sua ferita gli sembrava strutturale, come se lui e suo padre avessero scelto le proprie idee politiche al solo scopo di odiarsi, e l'unico modo per uscirne fosse il distacco.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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3ad4824
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lHsn lTl`; `l~ kl mn qrrth lsyy'@ lty tkhdhh, ytkhdh qrryn 'w thlth@ qrrt jyd@.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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9f9e19d
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His resentment of his wife, Caroline, was moderate and well contained.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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c5857b0
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At Ardennes she conceived a desire to strangle the young woman who prepped and held down garde manger. The woman, Becky Hemerling, was a culinary-institute grad with wavy blond hair and a petite flat body and fair skin that turned scarlet in the kitchen heat. Everything about Becky Hemerling sickened Denise--her C.I.A. education (Denise was an autodidact snob), her overfamiliarity with more senior cooks (especially with Denise), her vocal a..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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5b4012d
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Although in general Gary applauded the modern trend toward individual self-management of retirement funds and long-distance calling plans and private-schooling options, he was less than thrilled to be given responsibility for his own personal brain chemistry, especially when certain people in his life, notably his father, refused to take any such responsibility. But Gary was nothing if not conscientious. As he entered the darkroom, he estim..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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867d0cc
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It's the fate of most Ping-Pong tables in home basements eventually to serve the ends of other, more desperate games.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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66df3ac
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E tautoteta apoteleitai apo duo antiphatikes prostages. Apo ten prostage na diatereseis mustika kai apo ten prostage na ta koinopoieseis. Pos xereis oti eisai anthropos diakritos apo tous allous; Me to na kratas orismena pragmata gia ton eauto sou. Ta phulas mesa sou, giati an den to kaneis, den uparkhei diakrise anamesa sto mesa kai sto exo, anamesa ston esoteriko kai ston exoteriko kosmo. Ta mustika einai o tropos na xereis oti ekheis ena..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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3f9e497
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As one anthropologist pointed out to me, trauma is usually a group experience, so trauma recovery should be a group experience as well. But in our society it's not.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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19120e1
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I'm a carnivore, a carnivore, a terrible disgusting carnivore.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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00dc46b
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But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life? What becomes of students so committed to their own vulnerability, conditioned to imagine they have no agency, and protected from unequal power arrangements in romantic life? I can't help asking, because there's a distressing little fact about the discomfort of vulne..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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4457dc4
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These are things you're not supposed to say on campuses now. But let's be frank. To begin with, if colleges and universities around the country were in any way serious about policies to prevent sexual assaults, the path is obvious: don't ban teacher-student romance, ban fraternities. And if we want to limit the potential for sexual favoritism--another rationale often proffered for the new policies--then let's include the institutionalized s..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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4304686
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A source of continual embarrassment along the American frontier--from the late 1600s until the end of the Indian Wars, in the 1890s--was a phenomenon known as "the White Indians." The term referred to white settlers who were kidnapped by Indians--or simply ran off to them--and became so enamored of that life that they refused to leave. According to many writers of the time, including Benjamin Franklin, the reverse never happened: Indians ne..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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49afcc3
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The infinite variety of human badness.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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ccc7de2
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Once a killer, always a killer.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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95c16b0
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There was no arguing with blood.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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571b59a
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People steal elephants. It happens all the time.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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86b47e9
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In Technology We Trust. Need to put that on the new hundred-dollar bill.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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350c00a
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I can't stomach any kind of notion that serious fiction is good for us, because I don't believe that everything that's wrong with the world has a cure, and even if I did, what business would I, who feel like the sick one, have in offering it? It's hard to consider literature a medicine; sooner or later the therapeutically minded reader will end up fingering reading itself as the sickness.
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Jonathan Franzen |
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e9e4f92
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There are obvious psychological stresses on a person in a group, but there may be even greater stresses on a person in isolation. Most higher primates, including humans, are intensely social, and there are few examples of individuals surviving outside of a group. A modern soldier returning from combat goes from the kind of close-knit situation that humans evolved for into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educa..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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3f5a5bc
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Robin's voice on the executive chef's line came to signify tongue. She didn't say more than a word or two before Denise tuned out. Robin's tongue and lips continued to form the instructions demanded by the day's exigencies, but in Denise's ear they were already speaking that other language of up and down and round and round that her body intuitively understood and autonomously obeyed; sometimes she melted so hard at the sound of this voice ..
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Jonathan Franzen |
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f6f95a9
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But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life?
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Jonathan Franzen |
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0333f86
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He ate arugula ("rocket," the old farmers called it) so strong it made his eyes water, like a paragraph of Thoreau."
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Jonathan Franzen |