| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: killing among themselves. The scalp-talking Indian and the head-
hunting Melanesian have been either destroyed or converted to a
belief in the superior efficacy of civil suits and criminal
prosecutions. The planet is being subdued. The wild and the
hurtful are either tamed or eliminated. From the beasts of prey
and the cannibal humans down to the death-dealing microbes, no
quarter is given; and daily, wider and wider areas of hostile
territory, whether of a warring desert-tribe in Africa or a
pestilential fever-hole like Panama, are made peaceable and
habitable for mankind. As for the great mass of stay-at-home
folk, what percentage of the present generation in the United
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: no such veil. And I cannot help thinking of a passage in the
"Imitation of Christ" where the ascetic author, who knew life so
profoundly, says that "there are persons esteemed on their
reputation who by showing themselves destroy the opinion one had
of them." This is the danger incurred by an author of fiction
who sets out to talk about himself without disguise.
While these reminiscent pages were appearing serially I was
remonstrated with for bad economy; as if such writing were a form
of self-indulgence wasting the substance of future volumes. It
seems that I am not sufficiently literary. Indeed, a man who
never wrote a line for print till he was thirty-six cannot bring
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity.
The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi
overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work
from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary
dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there
appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the
individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of
the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long
years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the
breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of
The Fall of the House of Usher |
