Donkey

A magazine should be the reflection of its time, and one that ceases to reflect this should come to an end. The moment we live in is archaistic, conservative and irresponsible, for the war is separating culture from life and driving it back on itself, the impetus given by Left Wing politics is for the time exhausted, and however much we should like to have a paper that was revolutionary in opinions or original in technique, it is impossible to do so when there is a certain suspension of judgement and creative activity. The aim of Horizon is to give to writers a place to express themselves, and to readers the best writing we can obtain. . . . [A]nd so Horizon will have political articles, though it will never imitate those journals, in which, like pantomime donkeys, the political front legs kick and entangle the literary hind ones.

-- Cyril Connolly, "Comment," Horizon (Vol. 1, No. 1), January 1940

Who's There?

Porter: Here’s a knocking, indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate he should have old turning the key. [Knocking within.] Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ the name of Beelzebub?

Shakespeare, Macbeth

What is it like to be Bush (#1)?

Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

Washington Post, April 17 2004

Orwell #3

The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her--her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that 'It isn't the same for them as it would be for us,' and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was
happening to her--understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.

The Road to Wigan Pier, Chapter One

Shout Out

Before I had a chance to protest, I found myself being led by the arm into the kitchen. There I came upon a group of five or six people sitting around the table eating Sunday breakfast. The table was crowded with food: bacon and eggs, a full pot of coffee, bagels and cream cheese, a platter of smoked fish. I had not seen anything like this in months, and I scarcely knew how to react. It was though I had suddenly been put down in the middle of a fairy tale. I was the hungry child who had been lost in the woods, and now I had found the enchanted house, the cottage built of food.

Moon Palace, Paul Auster

Orwell #2

In a country like England, in spite of its class-structure, there does exist a certain cultural unity. All through the Christian ages, and especially since the French Revolution, the Western world has been haunted by the idea of freedom and equality; it is only an idea, but it has penetrated to all ranks of society. The most atrocious injustices, cruelties, lies, snobberies exist everywhere, but there are not many people who can regard these things with the same indifference as, say, a Roman slave-owner. Even the millionaire suffers from a vague sense of guilt, like a dog eating a stolen leg of mutton.
-- "Charles Dickens"

Zimmerman #1:

(for the bizarrely reemergent Ahmad Chalabi)

They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings.
Steal a little and they throw you in jail,
Steal a lot and they make you king.

-- "What's a Sweetheart Like You . . ."

Orwell #1

There was a new rule that censored portions of a newspaper must not be left blank but filled up with other matter; as a result it was often impossible to tell when something had been cut out.

Homage to Catalonia, Chapter 13