The history of theater from the medieval period until the nineteenth century has been in large part a history of further and furth...er separations of the scene of dramatic action from the physical situation of the audience. Even as the subject matter--in the plays of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Strindberg--became more and more continuous with the life of the audience, the stage itself pulled in its apron, emphasized its proscenium, and became a room with an invisible fourth wall, allowing the audience to look in, while keeping it more definitely outside. The progress of film was the reverse. From the stylized and theatrical settings of the early dramas, silent films moved into greater and greater involvement with the actors. Previously the audience saw actors from a distance, with a sense of tableau and formal separation. Although they seemed to be like us, they were not: silent, hieratic, caught in frightened frenzies of comedy, tragedy, and melodrama.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder, so ...much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
FROM his shoulder Hiawatha Took the camera of rosewood,... Made of sliding, folding rosewood; Neatly put it all together. In its case it lay compactly, Folded into nearly nothing; But he opened out the hinges, Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges, Till it looked all squares and oblongs, Like a complicated figure In the second book of Euclid. This he perched upon a tripod-- Crouched beneath its dusky cover-- Stretched his hand, enforcing silence-- Said "Be motionless, I beg you!" Mystic, awful was the process. All the family in order Sat before him for their pictures: Each in turn as he was taken, Volunteered his own suggestions, His ingenious suggestions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When you're tall, thin, blond, and have big boobs, you can have any job you want. ... ultimately, it all settled into a runni...ng soap opera, with new episodes on the same theme every week. Barbara and Peter. Episode 13 of the Barbara is Uninhibited and Peter is a Drag Show: this week Barbara and Peter went to a party and Barbara pulled down her pants and mooned the guests and Peter was furious. Joanna and Dave, Episode 19 of the Will Joanna Ever Get Dave to Share the Household Duties Show: this week Joanna refused to get out of bed and change the channel and Dave hit her and she threatened to kill herself. Claire and Herbie in the Claire has Sexual Boredom but Loves Her Husband Show: this week a man in the office Claire has the hots for put his hand on her leg while they were having a drink at P. J. Clarke's, but it was time to go home and feed the children and she never did find out whether it was significant or an accident.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is a slum?... it is something that mostly exists in the imaginations of middle-class do-gooders and bureaucrats: people who d...o not have to live in them in the first place and do not have to live in what they put up afterwards once they have pulled them all down. One person's slum is another person's community.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yes, but what are all these guises, aspects presentations? Only manifestations of what we all are at different times, according to... how these needs are pulled out of us. I write in these bald words the deepest lessons of my life, the truest substance of what I have learned. I am not only a Chronicler of Zone Three, or only partially, for I also share in Al*Ith's condition of being ruler insofar as I can write of her, describe her. I am woman with her (though I am a man) as I write of her femaleness--and Dabeeb's. I am Ben Ata when I summon him into my mind and try to make him real. I am ... what I am at the moment I am that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Once you get into this great stream of history you can't get out. You can drown. Or you can be pulled ashore by the tide. But it i...s awfully hard to get out when you are in the middle of the stream--if it is intended that you stay there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The careers of Napoleon and de Gaulle bear comparison, though it is always unwise to take such imposed similarities too far. But n...evertheless, both their careers were born out of social upheaval and military disaster. It is astonishing that Napoleon, a mere youthful artillery officer from despised Corsica, should have pulled together a country reeling from the horrors of revolution; survived the ignominy of defeat in Egypt; created a new France, constitutionally, legally, and organizationally; brought emperors and kings to their knees; allied himself through marriage with one of the proudest European dynasties; fought a series of impeccably planned and devastatingly executed campaigns; had the whole world within his grasp ... and, so very nearly, held it there. It is equally extraordinary that Charles de Gaulle, a brilliant though suspect tank commander, should have snatched from the fall of France a personal triumph. Who else, one wonders, could have continued to assert the position of himself and his country in the face of dislike and mistrust? Who else, like Napoleon returning from Elba, could have emerged from the self-imposed exile of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises to restore France's confidence? Both men were seized with the concept of la gloire. Both took that concept to the ultimate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buckeye does not grow in New England, and the mockingbird is rarely heard here. The w...ild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons, cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer; but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »