Status Updates From Sheppard Lee, Written by Hi...

I agree with what I take to be the central point of the Book VI, that violence is always tragic and can never be fully justified. But the image of an innocent slave owner killed by his slaves doesn’t feel like a great way to make this point


That being said the section isn’t totally without merit: the emergence of a revolutionary conscience is cool, ditto the ideas around the pamphlet and its creation of history

Book VI didn’t age as well as the rest of the book; in fact, it aged pretty poorly. That being said, I’m not done with it yet, and I have the impression Bird’s going to save it, as it seems Tom is on the cusp of developing a revolutionary conscious.

“What is the world around us but a great concert-hall, echoing with the music of birds and beasts, of wind, water, and foliage? what but a great gallery of pictures, painted by the hand of Providence? Nature is a painter—Nature is a musician; and her sons can do nothing better than follow her example.” Book V, Ch 3.

“As for the president, we would have him reserved for a nobler purpose; we would have him boiled down to a soap, according to the plan recommended by the French chymists, to be used by his successor in scouring the constitution and the minds of the people.”

Book IV, Chapter 7.

Outrageous. Absolutely hilarious. Genuinely one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.

Its musings on the soul and the body feel serious without being suffocating, and extremely prescient given the near ubiquity of bodies, orientation, space, etc in modern theoretical writing.

"...For five years, none of us, the sons of nabobocracy, could compare with you in dash, flash, and splash. But even Phaeton fell! Horses galloped away, buggies and curricles rolled into the gutter, and tailors looked alarmed—stocks flew out at the window, bricks and mortar took to themselves wings, and your stockings began to want darning. Then said Dawkins, ‘I will marry a wife'..."

"Reader, if thou art a rich man, and despisest thy neighbour, remember that he has a thousand friends of his class where thou has one of thine, and that he can beat thee at the elections. If thou art a gentleman, remember that thy cobbler is another, or thinks himself so - which is all the same thing in America."

"'Who can say the calling of the quack is not honest - nay, even philanthropic? He is a public benefactor - a friend even of the physicians; for he frees them from the painful necessity of killing, by making men their own executioners.'"

"I say the acquittal was perhaps owing in part to the testimony of the surgeons; though much of it might be attributed to the marvellous humanity that reigns in the criminal courts of the city of Brotherly Love, to the great benefit and encouragement of that proscribed and injured class of men, namely - murderers."

"To this condition he had been reduced by goodness; for, being an amateur in that virtuous art . . . he had borrowed from the hoards of his employers (the president and directors of a certain stock-company, . . .), and thus, perforce, made charitable an institution that was chartered to be uncharitable. He committed the fault, however, of borrowing without the previous ceremony of asking."

"I never saw him at all, nor, indeed, any other extremely true and handsome sweetheart of the male gender in all my life; for those that are true are ugly, and those that are handsome are as uncertain as politics."

"I never knew even the most exclusive and fastidious of examiners to carry his scrutiny so far back as a grandfather; for, indeed, all our grandfathers in America were pretty much alike, and the sooner we forget them the better."

"Such a siege of dunning was perhaps never endured, except by a poor dandy. They dunned and they dinned, they poked out their ugly bills, and they gave loose to their inhuman tongues, - in a word, they conducted in such a manner that I was more than once inclined to jump out the window, being driven to complete desperation."

"Then came another, . . . then another, and another, and another, until I believe there were fourteen different souls in the room (or rather bodies, for I don't think they had one soul among them), all of them armed with long bills, all clamorous for their money, and all (being encouraged by the example of the others) as noisy, mad, and ferocious as any mob of free and independent republicans I ever laid my eyes on."

"When I recovered my wits, I thought I had got into the place which is never mentioning among polite people, except at church."

"Next door . . . lived the great lawyer of our square, the celebrated Coke Butterside, Esq. I could see him sally out every morning with his green bag, which he carried in his own hands, either because he intended to be a candidate at the next Congressional election, and would seem democratic, or because he was afraid, if he intrusted it to another, the devil might snap it up as his own property.