Posts

One of Ours

When he pondered upon this conclusion, Claude thought of the Erlichs. Julius could go abroad and study for his doctor's degree, and live on less than Ralph wasted every year. Ralph would never have a profession or a trade, would never do or make anything the world needed. Nor did Claude find his own outlook much better. He was twenty-one years old, and he had no skill, no training,--no ability that would ever take him among the kind of people he admired. He was a clumsy, awkward farmer boy, and even Mrs. Erlich seemed to think the farm the best place for him. Probably it was; but all the same he didn't find this kind of life worth the trouble of getting up every morning. He could not see the use of working for money, when money brought nothing one wanted. Mrs. Erlich said it brought security. Sometimes he thought this security was what was the matter with everybody; that only perfect safety was required to kill all the best qualities in people and develop the mean ones.
Post a Comment
Read more

One of Ours: Cather vs Hemingway

Image
I haven't gotten to the WWI part yet, the part of the novel that some notable critics had a problem with (e.g., Hemingway). We'll see. War of the Words: Cather vs. Hemingway, 1923 - The American Writers Museum https://share.google/yGmVNWIhAan83WAFr
Post a Comment
Read more

Happy May Day (2026)

Image
 
Post a Comment
Read more

One of Ours

He was thinking about what Dan had said while they were hitching up. There was a great deal of truth in it, certainly. Yet, as for him, he often felt that he would rather go out into the world and earn his bread among strangers than sweat under this half-responsibility for acres and crops that were not his own. He knew that his father was sometimes called a "land hog" by the country people, and he himself had begun to feel that it was not right they should have so much land,--to farm, or to rent, or to leave idle, as they chose. It was strange that in all the centuries the world had been going, the question of property had not been better adjusted. The people who had it were slaves to it, and the people who didn't have it were slaves to them.
Post a Comment
Read more

Willa Cather: One of Ours"

His mother was old-fashioned. She thought dancing and card-playing dangerous pastimes--only rough people did such things when she was a girl in Vermont--and "worldliness" only another word for wickedness. According to her conception of education, one should learn, not think; and above all, one must not enquire. The history of the human race, as it lay behind one, was already explained; and so was its destiny, which lay before. The mind should remain obediently within the theological concept of history.
Post a Comment
Read more

Klee's Angelus Novus Revisited

Image
  Only recently have they found an interesting "interleaf" beneath Paul Klee's Angelus Novus. What's Behind the Angel of History? https://share.google/bMQdiVj2uJY3Q9hmF #rlswihart13  #paulklee #angelusnovus  #walterbenjamin  #angelofhistory *** From Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History,": A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irre...
Post a Comment
Read more

Daudet's "The Last Lesson"

One topic leading to another, Monsieur Hamel began to speak of the French language, saying it was the strongest, clearest, most beautiful language in the world, which we must keep as our heritage, never allowing it to be forgotten, telling us that when a nation has become enslaved, she holds the key which shall unlock her prison as long as she preserves her native tongue. [“S’il tient sa langue il tient la clé qui de ses chaines le délivre.” — F. MISTRAL.]
Post a Comment
Read more