Though Life's Tuition Is Always Ruinous, Inexorably

Printed Prose Is Historically A Most Peculiar, Almost An Aberrant Way Of Telling Stories, And By Far The Most Inherently Anesthetic: It Is The Only Medium Of Art I Can Think Of Which Appeals Directly To None Of Our Five Senses. The Oral And Folk Tradition In Narrative Made Use Of Verse Or Live-voice Dynamics, Embellished By Gesture And Expression--a Kind Of Rudimentary Theater--as Do The Best Raconteurs Of All Times. Commonly There Was Musical Accompaniment As Well: A Kind Of One-man Theater-of-mixed-means.

A Curious Thing About Written Literature: It Is About Four Thousand Years Old, But We Have No Way Of Knowing Whether Four Thousand Years Constitutes Senility Or The Maiden Blush Of Youth.

To Turn Experience Into Speech - That Is, To Classify, To Categorize, To Conceptualize, To Grammarize, To Syntactify It - Is Always A Betrayal Of Experience, A Falsification Of It; But Only So Betrayed Can It Be Dealt With At All, And Only In So Dealing With It Did I Ever Feel A Man, Alive And Kicking.

The Genie Declared That In His Time And Place There Were Scientists Of The Passions Who Maintained That Language Itself, On The One Hand, Originated In 'infantile Pregenital Erotic Exuberance, Polymorphously Perverse,' And That Conscious Attention, On The Other, Was A 'libidinal Hypercathexis' - By Which Magic Phrases They Seemed To Mean That Writing And Reading, Or Telling And Listening, Were Literally Ways Of Making Love.

My Dear Fellow,' Burlingame Said, 'we Sit Here On A Blind Rock Careening Through Space; We Are All Of Us Rushing Headlong To The Grave. Think You The Worms Will Care, When Anon They Make A Meal Of You, Whether You Spent Your Moment Sighing Wigless In Your Chamber, Or Sacked The Golden Towns Of Montezuma? Lookee, The Day's Nigh Spent; 'tis Gone Careening Into Time Forever. Not A Tale's Length Past We Lined Our Bowels With Dinner, And Already They Growl For More. We Are Dying Men, Ebenezer: I'faith, There's Time For Naught But Bold Resolves!