Literary Zen

Literary Zen XV

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For many people art means rose-coloured windows, and selection means picking a bouquet for Mrs. Grundy. They will tell you glibly that artistic considerations have nothing to do with the disagreeable, with the ugly; they will rattle off shallow commonplaces about the province of art and the limits of art, till you are moved to some wonder in return as to the province and the limits of ignorance.

Henry James

Literary Zen XIV

by
Edgar Allan Poe

Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

— from The Black Cat

MORE LITERARY ZEN
#vote

Literary Zen XI

by
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer*

There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.

*Perhaps a better caption would be, Willem Defoe as Arthur Schopenhauer, which is why I shan’t give up my day job.

Oh yeah, my books will be free from 00:01 (PDST) tonight until 23:59 PDST) Friday.

✌️

Straight On Through*

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You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless -there is only one thing to do with a novel [or anything important**] and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.

Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald in a 1929 letter from France, courtesy the New York Times archive
Hemingway and Fitzgerald in Paris, 1925, courtesy Brainpickings (lord only knows where she got it from)

#alonetogetherwiththelostgeneration

*Even though it says Straight On Through and not Break On Through, I wonder how many first thought of the Doors…

**IMO