“As these images sorted themselves into events (i.e. became a story) they seemed to demand no love interest and no close psychology. But the Form which excludes these things is the fairy tale. And the moment I thought of that I fell in love with the Form itself: its brevity, its severe restraints on description, its flexible traditionalism, its inflexible hostility to all analysis, reflections, and ‘gas.’ I was now enamoured of it. Its very limitations of vocabulary became an attraction; as the … [Read more...] about Hope in a Kingdom Far and Clear
Mark Helprin
Losing Your Dharma
“It’s impossible to fall off mountains you fool.” If your response to the preceding is “Wow, man. That’s deep. Really deep,” then I have a book for you. If you respond like any sane person and say “Uh, not only is that untrue, it’s a rather stupid mantra,” then sorry, No Book for You. The Book: Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. The bit above is the high point of the tale. It occurs when Kerouac’s alter ego is climbing a mountain and gets scared he will fall off, and then … [Read more...] about Losing Your Dharma