W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 02

[Quote]

"Why, Kira," asked Irina, "aren't you interested in the subject of this discussion?"

"I am," Kira answered calmly, "but I think the discussion is superfluous. I am going to the Technological Institute."

"Kira!"

There were seven startled voices and they all uttered one name. Then Galina Petrovna said: "Well, with a daughter like this even her own mother isn't let in on her secrets!"

"When did you decide that?" Lydia gasped.

"About eight years ago," said Kira.

"But Kira! What will you do?" Maria Petrovna gasped.

"I'll be an engineer."

"Frankly," said Victor, annoyed, "I do not believe that engineering is a profession for women."

"Kira," Alexander Dimitrievitch said timidly, "you've never liked the Communists and here you select such a favorite profession of theirs--a woman engineer!"

"Are you going to build for the Red State?" asked Victor.

"I'm going to build because I want to build."

"But Kira!" Lydia stared at her, bewildered. "That will mean dirt, and iron, and rust, and blow-torches, and filthy, sweaty men and no feminine company to help you."

"That's why I like it."

"It is not at all a cultured profession for a woman," said Galina Petrovna.

"It's the only profession," said Kira, "for which I don't have to learn lies. Steel is steel. Most of the other sciences are someone's guess, and someone's wish, and many people's lies."

[Unquote, emphasis mine.]

W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 01

We the Living: 60th Anniversary Edition by Ayn Rand

Excellent so far (just started it again); I'll be posting some quotes right here.

[Quote:]
"I'll tell you, Galina," Maria Petrovna hurried and coughed, choked, and went on, "I'll tell you the best thing to do: Alexander must take a job."

Galina Petrovna sat up straight, as if she had been slapped in the face. "A Soviet job?"

"Well...all jobs are Soviet jobs."

"Not as long as I live," Alexander Dimitrievitch stated with unexpected strength.

Vassili Ivanovitch dropped his spoon and it clattered into his plate; silently, solemnly, he stretched his big fist across the table and shook Alexander Dimittrievitch's hand and threw a dark glance at Maria Petrovna. She cringed, swallowed a spoonful of millet, coughed.

"I'm not saying anything about you, Vasili," she protested timidly. "I know you don't approve and...well, never will...But I was thinking they get bread cards, and lard, and sugar, the Soviet employees do--sometimes."

"When I have to take Soviet employment," said Vasili Ivanovitch, "you'll be a widow, Marussia."

"I'm not saying anything, Vasili, only..."

[Unquote.]

We here in America are extremely pragmatic, (and maybe used to being slaves) so we don't even think twice--gotta keep the income coming in--we work for the few corporations or government agencies that have the last few good paying jobs or we earn wages not worth the paper its printed on in the private sector.

Is it a sin to work for the system until you have enough capital to have more choices?

W: LP: GRP: PL: Solomon Among the Postmoderns: 01

Solomon among the Postmoderns by Peter J. Leithart




Vapor



The neat boundaries of knowledge, and the easy certainties of modern language, seem to be diffusing to nothing. All is liquid, vapor, mist. It wouldn't have surprised Solomon. He would have seen our sense of disorientation and our frustrated lack of control not as the "end of reality" but as our awakening to reality as it is and always has been.

--{Leithart, Peter J. Solomon Among the Postmoderns. Michigan: Brazos Press (Baker), 2008. Print. p.66}



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W: LP: GRP: PKD: VALIS

VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick

I'm about two thirds through the novel, "VALIS", (second of four* in this collection) and I find elements of the polyphonic voice reminiscent of Dostoevsky, but with an almost schizophrenic exploration of madness, philosophy, and religion in a proto-New Age mien. This is not so much a novel as a out-spilling of the mental overload that was Philip K. Dick the author.





*I would have made it a five novel collection and added "Radio Free Albemuth".

W: LP: GRP: PKD resumed

In August of 2009, I blogged about the third volume in Library of America's edition of the major novels of Philip K. Dick. I had to leave off for awhile, but now that I have a copy of the audible edition of VALIS, I have started in again on this second of the four novels in this volume. As I got into the beginning of this story, I came across this quote which exemplifies the origins of the drug war:

[Quote:]
As a matter of fact, Fat had lost his own wife, the year before, to mental illness. It was like a plague. No one could discern how much was due to drugs. This time in America--1960 to 1970--and this place, the Bay Area of Northern California, was totally f*<#ed. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that's the truth. Fancy terms and ornate theories cannot cover this fact up. The authorities became as psychotic as those they hunted. They wanted to put all persons who were not clones of the establishment away. The authorities were filled with hate. Fat had seen police glower at him with the ferocity of dogs. The day they moved Angela Davis, the black Marxist, out of the Marin County jail, the authorities dismantled the whole civic center. This was to baffle radicals who might intend trouble. The elevators got unwired; doors got relabled with spurious information; the district attorney hid. Fat saw all this. He had gone to the civic center that day to return a library book. At the electronic hoop at the civic center entrance, two cops had ripped open the book and papers that Fat carried. He was perplexed. The whole day perplexed him. In the cafeteria, an armed cop watched everyone eat. Fat returned home by cab, afraid of his own car and wondering if he was nuts. He was, but so was everyone else.
[Unquote, obscuration mine.]