The National Distrust Of The Contemplative Temperament

Usually When I Drank Too Much, I Could Guess Why I Did So, The Objective Being To Murder A State Of Consciousness That I Didn't Have The Courage To Sustain--a Fear Of Heights, Which Sometimes During The Carnival Of The 1960s Accompanied My Attempts To Transform The Bourgeois Journalist Into An Avant-garde Novelist. The Stepped-up Ambition Was A Commonplace Among The Would-be William Faulkners Of My Generation; Nearly Always It Resulted In Commercial Failure And Literary Embarrassment.

Most American Cities Shop To Their Best Advantage When Seen From A Height Or From A Distance, At A Point Where The Ugliness Of The Buildings Dissolves Into The Beauty Of An Abstraction.

[for American Consumer Society], The Country's Reserves Of Ignorance Constitute A Natural Resource As Precious As The Mississippi River Or The Long-lost Herds Of Buffalo.

Power Broken Into A Thousand Pieces Can Be Hidden And Disowned.

The State Of Perpetual Emptiness Is, Of Course, Very Good For Business.