During the cattle drives, Texas cowboy music came into national significance. Its practical purpose is well known--it was used pri...marily to keep the herds quiet at night, for often a ballad sung loudly and continuously enough might prevent a stampede. However, the cowboy also sang because he liked to sing.... In this music of the range and trail is "the grayness of the prairies, the mournful minor note of a Texas norther, and a rhythm that fits the gait of the cowboy's pony."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is important to note that multiculturalism does not share the postmodernist stance. Its passions are political; its assumptions... empirical; its conception of identities visceral. For it, there is no doubting that history is something that happened and that those happenings have left their mark within our collective consciousness. History for multiculturalists is not a succession of dissolving texts, but a tense tangle of past actions that have reshaped the landscape, distributed the nation's wealth, established boundaries, engendered prejudices, and unleashed energies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And songs climb out of the flames of the near campfires, Pale, pastel things exquisite in their frailness... With a note or two to indicate it isn't lost, On them at least. The songs decorate our notion of the world And mark its limits, like a frieze of soap-bubbles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What precisely is it About the time of day it is, the weather, that causes people to note it painstakingly in their diaries...r />For them to read who shall come after?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. To "Why am I here?" To uselessness. It's the streami...ng reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpa...ble, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading ... may be given without first getting the author's permi...ssion. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is the disease which manifests itself in an inability to leave a party--any party at all--until it is all over and the lights... are being put out?... I suppose that part of this mania for staying is due to a fear that, if I go, something good will happen and I'll miss it. Somebody might do card tricks, or shoot somebody else.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »