More Good Words: The Literature Blog

    The School by Donald Barthelme Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that . . . that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems . . . and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don’t know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery . . . wasn’t the best. We complained about it. So we’ve got thirty kids there, each kid has his or her own little tree to plant, and we’ve got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that . . . Before that, just a couple of weeks before the thing with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes—well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that . . . you remember, the boiler was sh...

  I Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind. But to what purpose Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know. Other echoes Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow? Quick, said the bird, find them, find them, Round the corner. Through the first gate, Into our first world, shall we follow The deception of the thrush? Into our first world. There they were, dignified, invisible, Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves, In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air, And the bird called, in response to The unhea...

it's over a(see just over this)wall the apples are(yes they're gravensteins)all as red as to lose and as round as to find. Each why of a leaf says (floating each how) you're which as to die (each green of a new) you're who as to grow but you're he as to do what must(whispers)be must be(the wise fool) if living's to give so breathing's to steal-- five wishes are five and one hand is a mind then over our thief goes (you go and i) has pulled(for he's we) such fruit from what bough that someone called they made him pay with his now. But over a(see just over this)wall the red and the round (they're gravensteins)fall with a kind of a blind big sound on the ground

  IN ORDER, most potent Sire, to convey to your Majesty a just conception of the great extent of this noble city of Temixtitlan, and of the many rare and wonderful objects it contains; of the government and dominions of Moctezuma, the sovereign: of the religious rights and customs that prevail, and the order that exists in this as well as the other cities appertaining to his realm: it would require the labor of many accomplished writers, and much time for the completion of the task. I shall not be able to relate an hundredth part of what could be told respecting these matters; but I will endeavor to describe, in the best manner in my power, what I have myself seen; and imperfectly as I may succeed in the attempt, I am fully aware that the account will appear so wonderful as to be deemed scarcely worthy of credit; since even we who have seen these things with our own eyes, are yet so amazed as to be unable to comprehend their reality. But your Majesty may be assured that if there is...

            Introduction   Literary scholars and historians of many kinds know they need to read The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend Mr. Abaham Adams. It’s that important. But they are not the readers Henry Fielding had most in mind when he wrote the novel. He knew they were there, of course. And he didn’t want to disappoint. He wasn’t just writing a shallow piece of entertainment to take advantage of the quickly expanding market of casual readers. He was a serious writer of comedy. His intellectual and literary roots went back through Milton and Shakespeare all the way to Aristotle and Homer. Being firmly set in the richest intellectual soil of the Enlightenment, he had a high moral and literary purpose. But he had plenty of other purposes too. And he knew, while he did what he could to pull the scholars in, that he had to draw the “mere English reader” into the virtual circus of his...