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A great many cultures have believed that the absolute unity of two beings can only be achieved through the act of sexual intercourse. Additionally, we are destined to be eternally charmed by death. Thus, why not attempt to reach the state of absolute unity with death through the process of copulation with a corpse, a natural symbol of death?

Is Lucien such a complex character to have had these considerations? I do not believe so. I consider his desire to be ruled by the need for absolute control over the sexual object and the sexual desire itself which I believe arises from the fact of control. Nevertheless, his descriptions of the lifeless bodies he desecrates are in a way too beautiful to be merely despised, and they are ultimately what poised my thoughts I have expressed at the beginning of this short review.

Indeed, a book that could have easily failed as just another trivial shocker, was elevated by Gabrielle's gorgeous poetic prose, and for it, I am thankful.

The child's gentle spirit ought never to meet the vicious winds of death. Rest well, Gerard.


"Behold: – One day he found a mouse caught in Scoop’s mousetrap outside the fish market on West Sixth Street—Faces more bleak than envenomed spiders, those who invented mousetraps, and had paths of bullgrained dullishness beaten to their bloodstained doors, and crowed in the sill—For that matter, on this gray morning, I can remember the faces of the Canucks of Lowell, the small tradesmen, butchers, butter and egg men, fishmen, barrelmakers, bums in benches (no benches but the oldtime sidewalk chair spitters by the dump, by banana peels steaming in the midday broil)—The hungjawed dull faces of grown adults who had no words to praise or please little trying-angels like Gerard working to save the mouse from the trap—But just stared or gawped on jawpipes and were silly in their prime—The little mouse, thrashing in the concrete, was released by Gerard—It went wobbling to the gutter with the fishjuice and spit, to die—He picked it tenderly and in his pocket sowed the goodness—Took it home and nursed it, actually bandaged it, held it, stroked it, prepared a little basket for it, as Ma watched amazed and men walked around in the streets “doin good for themselves” rounding up paper beyond their beans—Bums! all!—A thought smaller than a mouse’s turd directed to the Sunday Service Mass necessity, and that usually tinged by inner countings how much they’ll plap in th’basket—I dont remember rationally but in my soul and mind Yes there’s a mouse, peeping, and Gerard, and the basket, and the kitchen the scene of this heart-tender little hospital—“That big thing hurt you when it fell on your little leg” (because Gerard could really feel empathetically that pain, pain he’d had enough to not be apprentice at the trade and pang)—He could feel the iron snap grinding his little imagined birdy bones and squeezing and cracking and pressing harder unto worse-than-death the bleak-in-life—For it’s not innocent blank nature made hills look sad and woe-y, it’s men, with their awful minds—Their ignorance, grossness, mean petty thwarthings, schemes, hypocrite tendencies, repenting over losses, gloating over gains—Pot-boys, bone-carriers, funeral directors, glove-wearers, fog-breathers, shit-betiders, pissers, befoulers, stenchers, fat calf converters, utter blots & scabs on the face of it the earth—“Mouse? Who cares about a gad dam mouse—God musta made em to fit our traps”—Typical thought–I’d as soon drop a barrel of you-know-what on the roof of my own house, as walk a mile in conversation about one of them–I dont count Gerard in that seedy lot, that crew of bulls—The particular bleak gray jowled pale eyed sneaky fearful French Canadian quality of man, with his black store, his bags of produce, his bottomless mean and secret cellar, his herrings in a barrel, his hidden gold rings, his wife and daughter jongling in another dumb room, his dirty broom in the corner, his piousness, his cold hands, his hot bowels, his well-used whip, his easy greeting and hard opinion—Lay me down in sweet India or old Tahiti, I dont want to be buried in their cemetery—In fact, cremate me and deliver me to les Indes, I’m through—Wait till I get going on some of these other bloodlouts, for that matter—Yet not likely Gerard ever, if he’d have lived, would have fattened as I to come and groan about peoples and in plain print loud and foolish, but was a soft tenderhearted angel the likes of which you’ll never find again in science fictions of the future with their bleeding plastic penis-rods and round hole-machines and worries about how to get from Pit to Pisspot which is one millionth of a billionth of an inch further in endlessness of our gracious Lord than the earth speck (which I’d spew) (if I were you) (Maha Meru)—Some afternoon, Gerard goes to school—It had been on a noontime errand when sent to the store to buy smoked fish, that he’d found the mouse–Now, smiling, I see him from my overstuffed glooms in the parlor corner walking up Beaulieu Street to school with his strapped books and long black stockings and that peculiar gloomy sweetness of his person that was all things to me, I saw nothing else—Happy because his mouse was fed and repaired and safe in her little basket—Innocent enough comes our cat in the mid drowses of day, and eats, and leaves but the tail, enough to make all Lowell Laugh, but when Gerard comes home at 4 to see his tail-let in the bottom of the poor little basket he’d so laboriously contrived, he cried—I cried too.

My mother tried to explain that it wasnt the cat’s fault and nobody’s fault and such was life.
He knew it wasnt the cat’s fault but he took Nanny and sat her on the rocking chair and held her jowls and delivered her an exhortation no less:
“Méchante! Bad girl! Dont you understand what you’ve done? When will you understand? We dont disturb little animals and little things! We leave them alone! We’ll never go to heaven if we go on eating each other and destroying each other like that all the time!—without thinking, without knowing!—wake up, foolish girl!—realize what you’ve done!—Be ashamed! shame! crazy face! stop wiggling your ears! Understand what I’m tellin you! It’s got to stop some fine day! There wont always be time!—Bad girl! Go on! Go in your corner! Think it over well!”

I had never seen Gerard angry.

I was amazed and scared in the corner, as one might have felt seeing Christ in the temple bashing the moneychanger tables every which away and scourging them with his seldom whip."

"When ye meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha! When ye meet your ancestor, kill your ancestor! When ye meet the disciple of Buddha, kill the disciple! When ye meet your father and mother, kill your father and mother! When ye meet your kin, kill your kin! Only thus will ye attain deliverance. Only thus will ye escape the trammels of material things and become free."

Young Mizoguchi met the perfection in form of a temple. He was entirely too young to comprehend what this necessitated. And so he went on living, but the temple, the perfection itself, tormented him, for how any beauty, no matter how beautiful, no matter how profound, could compare to the ideal. But Mizoguchi eventually seized the thought, he knew the temple must burn, not only for his sake but for the sake of everyone! So much spontaneous delight does this world possess, why must we allow perfection to blight it all?

I like Balzac's style. It might not be breathtaking, but it is clean, comprehensible, and flexible. While Balzac mostly sticks to his realism, there are truly some poetic moments in his writing.
Now that I have praised Balzac, I must call his story quite dull. This indeed is a matter of individual temperament and seeing that many people rather enjoyed it, I will not dwell on this point further for the story has found its intended crowd. I just so happen not to be one of them.

On the subject of Goriot, I have very little to say, but I believe it is still worth saying. Goriot is supposed to be a tragic character. A loving father, blinded by the love he has for his daughters. He might even be deemed a cynic's perfect strawman. Yet, in all of his frenzied, delusional ranting, there is a moment at which Goriot, if not directly confronting the truth, then at the very least accidentally stating it out loud:

"Oh! they will come! Come to me, darlings, and give me one more kiss; one last kiss, the Viaticum for your father, who will pray God for you in heaven. I will tell Him that you have been good children to your father, and plead your cause with God! After all, it is not their fault. I tell you they are innocent, my friend. Tell every one that it is not their fault, and no one need be distressed on my account. It is all my own fault, I taught them to trample upon me. I loved to have it so. It is no one’s affair but mine; man’s justice and God’s justice have nothing to do in it. God would be unjust if He condemned them for anything they may have done to me. I did not behave to them properly; I was stupid enough to resign my rights. I would have humbled myself in the dust for them. What could you expect? The most beautiful nature, the noblest soul, would have been spoiled by such indulgence. I am a wretch, I am justly punished. I, and I only, am to blame for all their sins; I spoiled them. To-day they are as eager for pleasure as they used to be for sugar-plums. When they were little girls I indulged them in every whim. They had a carriage of their own when they were fifteen. They have never been crossed. I am guilty, and not they—but I sinned through love."

Yes, at this moment, as in every other, Goriot is in all likelihood merely finding a course to justify his daughter's cruel behavior. But why must we ignore such a vital insight solely because it is made by a hysterical maniac? After all, Goriot has raised these daughters of his. Surely, he must have influenced them somewhat. Is it even far-fetched to say he has influenced them significantly? The way Goriot talks about money as if it is some sort of all-powerful deity is not at all incongruent with his daughter's proclivities for the materialistic. Perhaps, Goriot, you reap what you sow, and although I do not doubt the society's role in the perversion of your kin, I do not see you as any more noble of a soul. While you are tragic, you are tragically foolish, and while you are kind, your kindness is vice.

Michel and Ménalque must be my favorite literary characters ever conceived, and if not, then they are up there, roaming the highest of ranks. Gide's poetic yet simple style elevates them to the status of sheer ideal. I extol Michel's and Ménalque's vice for it is superior to any man's virtue. Doctrine dictates that one ought to experience, not merely to live. Philistines dare to refute? Oh, just how beautiful this world would be if got rid of moralists!



“You have to let other people be right,” was his answer to their insults. “It consoles them for not being anything else.”


“I have so little that nothing you see here belongs to me; not even, or especially not, the bed I sleep on. I have a horror of comfort; possessions invite comfort, and in their security a man falls asleep; I love life enough to try to live wide awake, and so, even among all my treasures, I cherish a sense of the precarious, by which I provoke or at least arouse my life. I can’t say I love danger, but I love a life of risk, I want life to demand of me, at every moment, all my courage, all my happiness, and all my health.”


“If only these people around us could be convinced. But most of them believe they get nothing good out of themselves except by constraint; they’re only pleased with themselves when they’re under duress. If there’s one thing each of them claims not to resemble it’s … himself. Instead he sets up a model, then imitates it; he doesn’t even choose the model—he accepts it ready-made. Yet I’m sure there’s something more to be read in a man. People dare not—they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry—I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don’t find themselves at all. I hate all this moral agoraphobia—it’s the worst kind of cowardice. You can’t create something without being alone. But who’s trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that’s the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that’s just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.”


"If there’s one thing I detest it’s a man of principles.”


“What’s the use? You who have a wife and child—you stay. Of the thousand forms of life, each of us can know only one. Envying another man’s happiness is madness: you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it. Happiness isn’t something that comes ready-made, to order. I’m leaving tomorrow; I know—I’ve tried to cut my happiness to my own measure. You keep your fireside happiness.”
“I’ve cut my happiness to my measure too!” I exclaimed. “But I’ve grown. And now my happiness is too tight for me. Sometimes I’m almost strangled by it.”


"Human poverty is an enslavement; to eat, a poor man consents to joyless labor, and all labor which is not joyous is mere drudgery, I thought. I would pay one man after another to rest, saying, “Stop working—you hate what you’re doing.” For each man I desired that leisure without which nothing new can flower—neither vice nor art."


"I might have wished she were wrong, but I had to admit that to me each man’s worst instinct seemed the most sincere. Then, what was it I called sincerity?"


"I despise those who can acknowledge beauty only when it’s already transcribed, interpreted."


"Memory is an invention of misery."

"Yet he was always playing with the thought, indeed he could not escape it. For though religion was without foundation it was also without limit and promised a complete escape from earth into dizzy, unexplored altitudes. Then, too, Durtal was attracted to the Church by its intimate and ecstatic art, the splendour of its legends, and the radiant naïveté of the histories of its saints.

He did not believe, and yet he admitted the supernatural. Right here on earth how could any of us deny that we are hemmed in by mystery, in our homes, in the street,—everywhere when we came to think of it? It was really the part of shallowness to ignore those extrahuman relations and account for the unforeseen by attributing to fate the more than inexplicable. Did not a chance encounter often decide the entire life of a man? What was love, what the other incomprehensible shaping influences? And, knottiest enigma of all, what was money?

There one found oneself confronted by primordial organic law, atrocious edicts promulgated at the very beginning of the world and applied ever since."


"I learned long ago that there are no people interesting to know except saints, scoundrels, and cranks. They are the only persons whose conversation amounts to anything. Persons of good sense are necessarily dull, because they revolve over and over again the tedious topics of everyday life. They are the crowd, more or less intelligent, but they are the crowd, and they give me a pain."

"Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life."

"Fathers! Just think about it for a minute—they’re enough to make you puke. Fathers are evil itself, laden with everything ugly in Man. There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers—one’s as bad as another. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they’ve never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they’ve never had the courage to live by—they’d like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it! Even the most neglectful fathers, like mine, are no different. Their consciences hurt them because they’ve never paid any attention to their children and they want the kids to understand just how bad the
pain is—to sympathize!
On New Year’s Day we went to Arashi Yama in Kyoto and as we were crossing the Bridge of Moons I asked my old man a question: ‘Dad, is there any purpose in life?’ You see what I was getting at, don’t you, what I really meant? Father, can you give me one single reason why you go on living? Wouldn’t it be better just to fade away as quickly as possible? But a first-class insinuation never reaches a man like that. He just looked surprised and his eyes bugged and he stared at me. I hate that kind of ridiculous adult surprise. And when he finally answered, what do you think he said?
‘Son, nobody is going to provide you with a purpose in life; you’ve got to make one for yourself.’
How’s that for a stupid, hackneyed moral! He just pressed a button and out came one of the things fathers are supposed to say. And did you ever look at a father’s eyes at a time like that? They’re suspicious of anything creative, anxious to whittle the world down into something puny they can handle. A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn’t even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.
Fathers are the flies of this world. They hover around our heads waiting for a chance, and when they see something rotten, they buzz in and root in it. Filthy, lecherous flies broadcasting to the whole world that they’ve screwed with our mothers. And there’s nothing they won’t do to contaminate our freedom and our ability. Nothing they won’t do to protect the filthy cities they’ve built for themselves.”

"The Hell's Angels' massive publicity - coming hard on the heels of the widely publicized student rebellion in Berkeley - was interpreted in liberal-radical-intellectual circles as the signal of a natural alliance. Beyond that, the Angels' aggressive, antisocial stance - their alienation, as it were - had a tremendous appeal for the more aesthetic Berkeley temperament. Students who could barely get up the nerve to sign a petition or to shoplift a candy bar were fascinated by tales of the Hell's Angels ripping up towns and taking whatever they wanted. Most important, the Angels had a reputation for defying police, for successfully bucking authority, and to the frustrated student radical this was a powerful image indeed. The Angels didn't masturbate, they raped. They didn't come on with theories and songs and quotations, but with noise and muscle and sheer balls.
The honeymoon lasted about three months and came to a jangled end on October 16, when the Hell's Angels attacked a Get Out of Vietnam demonstration at the Oakland-Berkeley border. The existential heroes who had passed the joint with Berkeley liberals at Kesey's parties suddenly turned into venomous beasts, rushing on the same liberals with flailing fists and shouts of Traitors, Communists, Beatniks! When push came to shove, the Hell's Angels lined up solidly with the cops, the Pentagon and the John Birch Society. And there was no joy that day in Berkeley, for Casey had apparently gone mad.
The attack was an awful shock to those who had seen the Hell's Angels as pioneers of the human spirit, but to anyone who knew them it was entirely logical. The Angels' collective viewpoint has always been fascistic. They insist and seem to believe that their swastika fetish is no more than an antisocial joke, a guaranteed gimmick to bug the squares, the taxpayers - all those they spitefully refer to as citizens. What they really mean is the Middle Class, the Bourgeoisie, the Burghers - but the Angels don't know these terms and they're suspicious of anyone who tries to explain them. If they wanted to be artful about bugging the squares they would drop the swastika and decorate their bikes with the hammer and sickle. That would really raise hell on the freeways... hundreds of Communist thugs roaming the countryside on big motorcycles, looking for trouble."