:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Saturday, December 06, 2003 ::

LRB | Frank Kermode : Complicated Detours:

"At the lowest practical level, Phillips advises us to regard death as a satisfactory as well as an inevitable terminus, and to stop wanting it to be other than it is, either by supposing it isn't the end or by regarding it as something for which in one way or another we should live; as if lives were the material of fictions dependent on that end. He is keenly pro-life, and quotes, ultimately with approval, what John Cage said in response to a complaint that there was too much suffering in the world - namely, that on the contrary there was just the right amount. This is theodicy with God left out, or replaced by Nature. The argument here is that Darwin and Freud so redescribed nature that we ought to be able to forget the old regrets about transience and accept an ephemeral existence, suffering and all, as a source of joy."

Darwin's Worms is a very interesting book. I should throw up some of my favorite quotes. I'll have to do that...

:: Jim Nichols 12/06/2003 12:03:00 AM [+] ::
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