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| Public Domain |
"Love always passes, but incompatibility remains forever."
The Insulted and the Injured by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Easy to see when you look back...especially with the partial objectivity granted by the passage of time. Love is not blind, it's blinding. So yes, I did date a born again Christian for years before that relationship crashed and burned. I was incapable of seeing that her death grip on an absurd version of spirituality would be the death of me. And that was just my first girlfriend. I'm not about to go through the whole list of my mistakes, but I think it's true that in every one of them my desire for a relationship--that safe haven against loneliness and that bulwark against the sheer terror of a seemingly meaningless universe--made me close my eyes to some very obvious incompatibility issues.
I'm through with all of that now. I much prefer the honesty of isolation to the constant (and humiliating) need for compromise that is a part of any romantic relationship.
Speaking of Golden Multitudes...
"In her autobiography, Romantic Adventure, Mrs. [Elinor] Glyn says that she wrote some of the more passionate episodes of Three Weeks during a visit to Venice a year or two after her marriage, when she felt herself neglected by her husband. 'My romantic soul,' she writes, 'constantly sought in flights of unfettered imagination an escape from the limitations and deprivations of my married life, and Three Weeks was the product. My head was a little turned, perhaps, by the amount of attention which almost all men except my husband gave me at that time.' It is a stirring thought that if Mr. Glyn had been more attentive on that holiday in Venice the world might have been spared Three Weeks."
Golden Multitudes The Story Of Best Sellers In The United States by Frank Luther Mott
After I finish this book, I'm going to see what other Frank Luther Mott books are to be had. He is one funny motherfucker.
I've been reading Golden Multitudes: The Story Of Best Sellers In The United States by Frank Luther Mott for awhile now...just nibbling at it, though I'm now on page 260 of 380. It's a delightful book; in part because of the subject matter, but mostly because the author, Frank Luther Mott, is such a smartass. Highly recommended... and available for free at Internet Archive.
Anyway...Mr. Mott starts each chapter with a quotation. This is the quotation for Chapter XXXVII. SUB-ROSA:
"Only Puritans think of the Devil as the most fascinating figure in the Universe. Terrified holy men believed that he could be repulsed only by stout fasting and hearty prayer, while the one complete and perfect exorcism is to face him squarely and yawn."
Heywood Broun
When I first read it, however, my eyes saw "trout fishing" rather than "stout fasting," so I was left to ponder why the devil was so opposed to the freshwater sport. And was probably not a Richard Brautigan fan.
