The Non-Facebook Post #100

Thank goodness for literature and authors, for their thoughts and ideas that you can hold onto and journey through life.

OF MICE AND MEN

Lennie stood over him. “What you supposin’ for? Ain’t nobody goin’ to suppose no hurt to George.” (Pg 126).

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment. (Pg 161).

Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968. Of Mice and Men. New York, N.Y: Penguin Books, 2002.

VANITY OF DULUOZ

“...just so I could go to the Lowell Public Library and study by myself at leisure such things as old chess books with their fragrance of scholarly thought, their old bindings, leading me to investigate other fragrant old books like Goethe, Hugo, of all things the Maxims of William Penn, just reading to show off to myself that I was reading.” (Pg 27).

Writing your name on notebooks = “give some pretense of explanation for the material existence of this Journal”; “schoolboy stuff”. (Pg 30).

“Mens sana et mens corpora - healthy mind and healthy body.” (Pg 35).

“He combines all the excellence of a Greek, that is, the brain of an Athenian and the brawn of a Spartan.” (Pg 35).

You just can't run off a broken leg, (Pg 72).

If you don't say what you want, what's the sense of writing? (Pg 75).

Lights of the campus, lovers arm in arm, hurrying eager students in the flying leaves of late October, the library going with glow, all the books and pleasure and the big city of the world right at my broken feet... (Pg 76).

Ah that menace of monstrous rolling waves of gray water and spray, put me in the mind of something past and something future. (Pg 89).

What I was doing was telling everybody to go jump in the big fat ocean of their own folly. I was also telling myself to go jump in the big fat ocean of my own folly. What a bath! It was delightful. I washed clean. (Pg 93).

I hadn't learned anything in college that was going to help me to be a writer anyway and the only place to learn was in my own mind in my own real adventures: an adventurous education, an educational adventure-someness, name it. (Pg 168).

...somehow things were grand and forward-looking. (Pg 192).

...the tone of the period I was undergoing. (Pg 256).

It wasn't so much the darkness of the night that bothered me but the horrible lights men had invented to illuminate their darkness with...I mean the very streetlamp down at the end of the street. (Pg 260).

Emily Dickinson
Illiad/Odyssey
Jan Valtin's Out of the Night
Frank Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else and Everything Happens to Me
Charlie Barnet's Cherokee
This Love of Mine
Thomas Wolfe

Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969. Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.

MAGGIE CASSIDY

At the edge of the gang trudged Scotty, still alone, still inside. (Pg 10).

My love, my sick sense, of Maggie Cassidy had grown into a tumultuous continuous sorrow in my noisy head. The dreams, fantasie vagaries, wild drownings of the mind, as in real life I continued to go to school, hot spring mornings now outdoors, practically summer and no more school and I graduate from Lowell High. (Pg 158).

Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969. Maggie Cassidy. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books, 1993.

THE GOLF OMNIBUS

They were real golfers, for real golf is a thing of the spirit, not of mere mechanical excellence of sport. (Pg 38).

In all affairs of human tension there must come a breaking point. (Pg 41).

It was during the long hours of the night, when ideas so often come to wakeful men... (Pg 42).

It is sweet and generous of you to think so highly of what was the merest commonplace act of politeness... (Pg 69).

He was no prude, but he had those decent prejudices that no self-respecting man can wholly rid himself, however broad-minded he may try to be. (Pg72).

"But I can't talk, confound it!" he burst out. "And how is a man to get anywhere at this sort of game without talking? " (Pg 80).

Golf, my dear fellow, is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well. (Pg 93).

It is only when he takes to the game in earnest that he becomes self-conscious and anxious, and tops his shots even as you and I (Pg 122-123).

"A goof," repeated the Sage. "One of those unfortunate beings who have allowed this noblest of sports to get a grip upon them, who have permitted it to eat into their souls,  like some malignant growth. The goof, you must understand,  is not like you and me. He broods. He becomes morbid. His goofery unfits him for the battle of life." (Pg 160)

I can't be expected to fling myself into his arms unless he gives some sort of a hint that he's ready to catch me (Pg 163).

I'd rather die an awful death than have any man think I wanted him so badly that I had to send relays of messengers begging him to marry me (Pg 163).

There are occasions when an oath seems to be so imperatively demanded that the strain of keeping it in must inevitably affect the ganglions or nerve-centres in such a manner as to diminish the steadiness of the swing (Pg 210).

I mean, there's such a thing as a fellow throwing himself away (Pg 236).

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive, and at last this great truth had come home to Wallace Chesney (Pg 240).

Wodehouse, P. G. 1881-1975. The Golf Omnibus. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1973.