Word: malorum
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...anything new or interesting out of these hoary maxims. Not Lewis H. Lapham, the editor of Harper's magazine and a regular contributor to it as well, whose Money and Class in America amusingly roams over the glitzy terrain of contemporary consumerism. Lapham of course rephrases old adages. Radix malorum est cupiditas becomes "It isn't the money itself that causes the trouble, but rather the use of money as votive ritual and pagan ornament." Wealth's inability to provide lasting cheer is limned anew: "Believing that they can buy the future and make time stand still, the faithful fall...
...novel's truth. The heroin is as shackling a possession as the bag of gold in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale. Indeed, it is worse. Chaucer's three thieves at least thought that the gold was benign. Their catastrophe stemmed from disregarding Christian doctrine: radix malorum est cupiditas (greed is the root of all evil). Without a moral compass, Stone's characters cannot even plead ignorance. The irony that the heroin's value is rooted in its destructiveness does not escape them, but they cannot drop it. Its force has irradiated their world. They...
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