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Owen Benjamin’s Followers (3)
Owen Benjamin
“I saw that all these people, learned, rich, and idle, were occupied with anything you like, only not with the question of life. They talked about everything; about literature, art, politics, the latest science, but never about what life is and what it is for. Among the people of our circle, life was spent in idleness, amusement, disconnect, and suffering. They complained of the emptiness of life and yet continued to live in the same way, talking endless nonsense, playing cards, going to theaters, arranging dinners and balls, and gossiping about one another. I felt that what I had been living was not real life. The conversation with these people was like walking through a lunatic asylum where the patients imagined they were emperors, generals, and archbishops and discussed their imaginary affairs with the greatest seriousness.” A few of those words probably tipped you off that it wasn’t as contemporary as you might have thought. “Balls” is a giveaway. That’s from A Confession by Leo Tolstoy, written in the 1880s. It sounds like it could have been written last Tuesday.”
― How to Slay a Wizard
― How to Slay a Wizard
“I insisted on looking at the solar eclipse myself when told I wasn’t allowed to. Remember what I said about nonsense. Non-sense. They wanted me to not trust my own eyes. I played Beethoven in music class and made the poor teacher feel like I was insulting her lesson. I thought she would be impressed. I thought I would earn her respect.”
― How to Slay a Wizard
― How to Slay a Wizard
“The head of the school board and all the Catholic churches was a little monster named Monsignor Fafaro. He was known for a very public young-boy sex abuse scandal with a horrifying number of victims. Despite mountains of evidence and testimony, he not only kept his job, but much of the town was devoted to him and even defended the fact that he was living with a nineteen-year-old when he was in his seventies, on church property. He was responsible for hiring all the priests and the teachers in Oswego. So with him and his friends on a half-century abuse spree, there was a strong sense of multigenerational anger toward anyone acting remotely, quote unquote, gay. It might well have been as a coping mechanism for what many of them had endured as children.”
― How to Slay a Wizard
― How to Slay a Wizard
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