Word: boredoms
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Juan is even more Shavian about woman than about man. He insists that he kept running off not through boredom after possessing them, but through fear of being possessed. Shaw's Juan is nine parts Puritan to one part libertine, and for him Heaven means hard work, not golden harps. There the Life Force, that instrument of man's purposeful striving, will carry him higher & higher, convert him into superman. Shaw's Heaven, far from being a blissful goal, would seem a mere way station on the road to perfection-as his Life Force, magnificent so long...
Russian Roulette. At 17, he tried the most drastic cure for boredom he could think of: Russian roulette. He put a bullet in a revolver, spun the chambers, then put the muzzle to his head and pulled the trigger. "It was a gamble with six chances to one against an inquest." He learned that he could enjoy the world again for a while by risking its total loss. But even toying with life became a bore. The fifth time he tried it, "I wasn't even excited." The sixth time was the last...
...basic morality that by the time he reaches college he has one chance in three of being a "moral imbecile." He is "too numb even to hate what is hateful," and the only aspects of the future that arouse his jaded interest are those which promise escape from boredom, e.g., "rocket flights to the moon." As for the present...
Both stories have their limitations; they offer perceptive characterization and expert use of words but, among other things, little activity. Both preserve a tone of detachment, the one of youth, the other of experience. Into this mood feelings no stronger than nostalgia, anxiety, or boredom can intrude. Those looking for more potent emotions may well be disappointed...
...modern times, rather few readers, all in all, have cared to exert enough jaw for that. Rabelais has been put aside, largely untasted, on the snap judgment that he is, as Voltaire said, a "drunken philosopher" who wrote "an extravagant and unintelligent book . . . prodigal of erudition, ordures and boredom." The book which Rabelais merrily dedicated to "Drinkers and . . . Syphilitics" has become the property of prurients and scholars...