“It is speech which contains all our childhood fantasies, all our primitive and original impulses, our horror shows, our “mother-meanings,” and whatever trips past the Forms we may have taken. And it is the sound of these early words, in the total context of their production, which gives them their emotional power, and connects them so closely with our basic desires.*12 The dark horse is stabled in the child. So the poet, the rhetorician, the philosopher, who thinks of a page as merely a page, and not as a field for the voice; who considers print to be simply print, and does not notice the notes it forms; whose style is disheveled and overcharged with energy or overrun with feeling, or whose frigid and compulsive orderings make the mouth dry; the author who is satisfied to see his words, as though at a distance like sheep on a hillside, and not as concepts coasting like clouds across his consciousness—such a writer will never enter, touch, or move the soul; never fill us with the feeling that he’s seen the Forms, whether or not there are any; never give us that ride up the hill of heaven as Plato has, or the sense that in accepting his words we are accepting a vision.”
― The William H. Gass Reader
― The William H. Gass Reader
“But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it.”
― A&P: Lust in the Aisles
― A&P: Lust in the Aisles
“We lose weeks like buttons, like pencils.”
― A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
― A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
“In the destructive element immerse.”
― Lord Jim
― Lord Jim
Kenneth’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Kenneth’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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