Books and Ideas (40)

I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.

Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Ed. Oates and Atwan (Continued).

S. J. Perelman. “Insert Flap ‘A’ and Throw Away.” 1944. “One stifling summer afternoon last August, in the attic of a tiny stone house in Pennsylvania, I made a most interesting discovery: the shortest, cheapest method of inducing a nervous breakdown ever perfected. In this technique, the subject is placed in a sharply sloping attic heated to 340 degrees F., and given a mothproof closet known as the Jiffy-Cloz to assemble. The Jiffy-Cloz, procurable at any department store or neighborhood insane asylum, consists of half a dozen gigantic sheets of red cardboard, two plywood doors, a clothes rack and a pack of staples. With these is included a set of instructions mimeographed in pale-violet ink, fruity with phrases like ‘Pass section F through slot AA, taking care not to fold tabs behind washer (see Fig. 9).’ The cardboard is so processed that as the subject struggles convulsively to force the staple through, it suddenly buckles, plunging the staple deep into his thumb.”

Katherine Anne Porter. “The Future Is Now.” 1950. An assessment of where we human beings are in the history of our existence in the world, with the atomic bomb, the symbol of humanity’s willful desire for self-destruction. But it may not be a world competed and, in the future, we could make a world in which its fragmented nature of today will be put together with some sense of meaning.

Mary McCarthy. “Artists in Uniform.” 1953. The author tells how she reluctantly becomes engaged in a conversation about Jews with a prejudiced military man. He thinks because of her Irish name that he can safely say whatever he wants about Jews. He doesn’t like them. The author waits until the colonel is about to depart again on the train to tell him that she is married to a Jew. A case study of a prejudiced mind and the futility of trying to change it with arguments based on logic.

Rachel Carson. “The Marginal World.” 1955. The shore brings land and sea together. The author reflects on the interaction of the two.

James Baldwin. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1955. Baldwin struggles with his hatred of whites. He recognizes that hatred is self-destructive, and concludes that he must accept life and people as they are, without rancor. But he is resolute that he will not stop fighting injustice.

Loren Eiseley. “The Brown Wasps.” 1956. People and animals cling to habits even though places have since changed—a department store replaces a field that once was tenanted by insects, birds, rodents and rabbits. The elevated goes underground and pigeons who used to be fed at its stations find the food they counted on gone. People and animals cling to the memories of what once was.

Eudora Welty. “A Sweet Devouring.” 1957. Author writes about her love of reading series books. She discovers that the volumes that follow are not as good as the first. Then she discovered 24 volumes of mark Twain, each book different. She had outgrown formulas for writing.

Donald Hall. “A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails.” 1961. The author reflects on the life of Washington Woodward who could do anything on his farm, but whose life was wasted on moving rocks and saving old, used nails and talking about every minute detail of his experience. The author seems to conclude that the activities of Washington Woodward’s life had no value to anyone. It was a full life, but it had no social significance. Seems to suggest that the traditional New Hampshire way of life was no longer relevant in the modern world.