Kapuscinski: On Provincialism of Time

We normally associate the concept of provincialism with geographic space. A provincial is one whose worldview is shaped by a certain marginal area to which he ascribes an undue importance, inaptly universalizing the particular. But T.S. Eliot cautions against another kind of provincialism--not of space, but of time.

"In our age," he writes in a 1944 essay about Virgil, "when men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with knowledge, and knowledge with information, and to try to solve problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which deserves a new name. It is a provincialism, not of space, but of time; one for which history is merely the chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no shares. The menace of this kind of provincialism is, that we can all, all the peoples on the globe, be provincials together; and those who are not content to be provincials, can only become hermits."

-Ryszard Kapuscinski, "Travels with Herodotus" p270-1

Chekhov on Academics

Voynitsky: ...for twenty-five years [Serebryakov] has been reading and writing things long known to the wise and of no interest to the stupid; so for twenty-five years he has been pouring from one empty vessel to another. And combined with what conceit! What presumption! He retires and not a living soul has heard of him, he is completely unknown; so, for twenty-five years, he has occupied a post which shouldn't have been his. And look at him: he strides about like a demi-god!

Astrov: Well, I think you're envious.

Voynitsky: Yes, I envy him. And he's so successful with women!

Chekhov on Grace

When a person expends the least possible quantity of movement on a certain act, that is grace.

Nabokov on Standards

I am very eager to debunk Dostoevsky. But I realize that readers who haven't read much may be puzzled by the set of values implied.

Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot train image

[Narrator G. Braithwaite speaking of Mauriac]
He finds himself by looking in the works of others...Reading his 'memoirs' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me, that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background of sooty walls, cables and sudden brickwork. The transparent shape flickers and jumps always a few feet away. You become accustomed to its existence, you move with its movements; and though you know its presence is conditional, you feel it to be permanent. Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and a burst of light; the face is gone forever.

(p96 in Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes - an otherwise forgettable book)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) - Memorable quotes

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004):

"[Mary reads to Dr. Mierzwiak out of 'Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'; the lines are from Alexander Pope's poem 'Eloisa to Abelard']

Mary: How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd."

West: The Day of the Locust III

He was carried through the exit to the back street and lifted into a police car. The siren began to scream and at first he thought he was making the noise himself. He felt his lips with his hands. They were clamped tight. He knew then it was the siren. For some reason this made him laugh and he began to imitate the siren as loud as he could.

(p185, The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West)