A lonely guilt pervades us all

"From the penthouse suspended silently so high above the winding traffic's iron lamentation, forty straight-down stories into those long, low, night-blue bars aglow below street-level, a lonely guilt pervades us all." - Nelson Algren in Nonconformity - Writing on Writing.

The book is a hotch-potch collection of essays from Nelson Algren, which were not published in the 1950s due to McCarthy's witch-hunt. (One particular essay (more about it later) really rings a bell in today's context of the "war on terrorism".) There are some really good essays in the book while some are really difficult to read and follow. The cover flap says it is full of quotable quotes and I sure enjoyed much of it, especially since he seems to share my penchant to quote others (definitely a "substitute for wit", in my case.)

For the time being, here is another gem from the first page of the book -- where Nelson quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald*

" ...that the natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness. I think also that in an adult the desire to be finer in grain than you are.. only adds to this unhappiness in the end..."

Reading this, I am reminded of my earlier post on tristesse and Amit Varma's post where he writes:

Both make me sad in different ways, and remind me of how futile this whole game is. And so, recursively, we progress.

* Note to self: I really should invest the time to go back and read the so-called great American novel - The Great Gatsby - instead of spending time reading a number of non-descripit books, as is my wont! There are so many 19th and 20th classics that I have not read... but have read many books from the last 20-25 years that perhaps no one will remember in another 20 years even, let alone a century or two later!