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Selection 1
They sat down to dinner, and after an excellent meal adjourned to the library. Candide, seeing a copy of Homer in a splendid binding, complimented the noble lord on his good taste. That is an author, said he, who was the special delight of great Pangloss, the best philosopher in all Germany. He's no special delight of mine, said Pococurante coldly. I was once made to believe that I took pleasure in reading him; but that constant recital of fights which are all alike, those gods who are always interfering but never decisively, that Helen who is the cause of the war and then scarcely takes any part in the story, that Troy which is always under siege and never taken—all that bores rne to tears. I have sometimes asked scholars if reading it bored them as much as it bores me; everyone who answered frankly told me the book dropped from his hands like lead, but that they had to have it in their libraries as a monument of antiquity, like those old rusty coins which can't be used in real trade.Source: Voltaire, Candide, trans. by Robert M. Adams, Norton Critical Edition, 2nd ed., New York, W.W. Norton, 1991, pp. 60-61.
They sat down to dinner, and after an excellent meal adjourned to the library. Candide, seeing a copy of Homer in a splendid binding, complimented the noble lord on his good taste. That is an author, said he, who was the special delight of great Pangloss, the best philosopher in all Germany. He's no special delight of mine, said Pococurante coldly. I was once made to believe that I took pleasure in reading him; but that constant recital of fights which are all alike, those gods who are always interfering but never decisively, that Helen who is the cause of the war and then scarcely takes any part in the story, that Troy which is always under siege and never taken—all that bores rne to tears. I have sometimes asked scholars if reading it bored them as much as it bores me; everyone who answered frankly told me the book dropped from his hands like lead, but that they had to have it in their libraries as a monument of antiquity, like those old rusty coins which can't be used in real trade.
Source: Voltaire, Candide, trans. by Robert M. Adams, Norton Critical Edition, 2nd ed., New York, W.W. Norton, 1991, pp. 60-61.
Selection 2
The field sits breathless in the orangy glow of the evening sun. I stare at the potato-colored earth of the infield, that wide, dun arc, surrounded by plastic grass. As I contemplate the prickly turf, which scorches the thighs and buttocks of a sliding player as if he were being seared by hot steel, it stares back in its uniform ugliness. The seams that send routinely hit ground balls veering at tortuous angles are vivid, gray as scars. I remember the ballfields of my childhood, the outfields full of soft hummocks and brown-eyed gopher holes. I stride down from the stands and walk out to the middle of the field. I touch the stubble that is called grass, take off my shoes, but find it is like walking on a row of toothbrushes. It was an evil day when they stripped the sod from this ballpark, cut it into yard-wide swathes, rolled it, memories and all, into great green-and-black cinnamon roll shapes, trucked it away. Nature temporarily defeated. But Nature is patient.Source: W.P. Kinsella, "The Thrill of the Grass," in The Norton Book of Sports, George Plimpton, ed., New York , W.W. Norton, 1992, p. 123
The field sits breathless in the orangy glow of the evening sun. I stare at the potato-colored earth of the infield, that wide, dun arc, surrounded by plastic grass. As I contemplate the prickly turf, which scorches the thighs and buttocks of a sliding player as if he were being seared by hot steel, it stares back in its uniform ugliness. The seams that send routinely hit ground balls veering at tortuous angles are vivid, gray as scars. I remember the ballfields of my childhood, the outfields full of soft hummocks and brown-eyed gopher holes. I stride down from the stands and walk out to the middle of the field. I touch the stubble that is called grass, take off my shoes, but find it is like walking on a row of toothbrushes. It was an evil day when they stripped the sod from this ballpark, cut it into yard-wide swathes, rolled it, memories and all, into great green-and-black cinnamon roll shapes, trucked it away. Nature temporarily defeated. But Nature is patient.
Source: W.P. Kinsella, "The Thrill of the Grass," in The Norton Book of Sports, George Plimpton, ed., New York , W.W. Norton, 1992, p. 123
Selection 3
It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigor of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would receive an education, which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very few accomplishments. That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.Source: Thomas Henry Huxley, "A Liberal Education," speech delivered at South London Working Men's College, London, 1868.
It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigor of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would receive an education, which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very few accomplishments. That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.
Source: Thomas Henry Huxley, "A Liberal Education," speech delivered at South London Working Men's College, London, 1868.
Selection 4
"Well, I gotta go. Come over at four," said Sharon, leaving Rosie off at the boardwalk. "Okay. See ya." She watched Sharon walk away. There was over five dollars in the pocket of her voluminous shorts, and nearly an hour and a half to kill. And she couldn't go home. Rosie was lonelier than anyone had ever been before, except for Typhoid Mary. Everything felt wrong, like a creepy dream, and she was afraid she was going to die: Rosie was stoned with fear. She bought a package of bubble gum at the five and dime, where she saw herself in a full-length mirror: ugly, skinny, evil. Her eyebrows looked like caterpillars. Her heavy black curls and her eyes were devilish, like that lady with snakes for hair, whose face turned you to stone. Don't look! Turn away! But for a moment, she didn't move a muscle.Source: Anne Lamott, Rosie, New York, Penguin Books, 1997, p. 189.
"Well, I gotta go. Come over at four," said Sharon, leaving Rosie off at the boardwalk. "Okay. See ya." She watched Sharon walk away. There was over five dollars in the pocket of her voluminous shorts, and nearly an hour and a half to kill. And she couldn't go home. Rosie was lonelier than anyone had ever been before, except for Typhoid Mary. Everything felt wrong, like a creepy dream, and she was afraid she was going to die: Rosie was stoned with fear. She bought a package of bubble gum at the five and dime, where she saw herself in a full-length mirror: ugly, skinny, evil. Her eyebrows looked like caterpillars. Her heavy black curls and her eyes were devilish, like that lady with snakes for hair, whose face turned you to stone. Don't look! Turn away! But for a moment, she didn't move a muscle.
Source: Anne Lamott, Rosie, New York, Penguin Books, 1997, p. 189.
Selection 5
I never thought I'd hear the words heroin and chic mentioned in the same sentence. But lately the two have been paired, in movies and other pop culture. This shakes me to my very soul, as I recall the private hell that heroin brought to my life for over 20 years. A single decision can determine one's life path. My seminal moment came on my nineteenth birthday. A friend stopped by to help me celebrate. At the time, I'd been experimenting with all kinds of illicit drugs. Marijuana had been the first. Soon the world was a veritable candy store: alcohol, uppers, downers, psychedelics—there was a pharmaceutical cocktail for every mood. Combine this with the invincibility of youth, and life became one long party. Or so it seemed. My true goal was self-anesthetization from the pains of life. On my nineteenth birthday, however, I crossed a further threshold. For the first time, I tried heroin, and the drug became my life partner for the next two decades. At first, there were no meetings in dark alleys or dingy bars. Drug use was easy and attractive. Heroin was just another adventure. A negative experience might have been the best thing to happen on that nineteenth birthday, but that wasn't the case. I felt right at home in the sedated euphoria caused by the drug. The insidious danger of heroin is that in early use, you're in control. You feel you can take it or leave it; therefore, quitting holds no urgency. Year after year passed. I went to school and became a social worker. It was all right; I just needed to use responsibly. Can you believe that? A responsible heroin addict. By age 30, the addiction was a way of life. The pain was great, an all-consuming dull throb of hopelessness and dependence that possessed my life. Greeting the day was a chore of the greatest magnitude. Sometimes I would sleep until 5:00 p.m. because the light was too revealing. I was a creature of the night, a vampire sucking family and friends for all they were worth.Source: Daniel Zanoza, "Back from the Brink," in A Reader for Developing Writers, 4th ed., Santi Buscemi, Ed., New York, McGraw-Hill, 1999, p. 178.
I never thought I'd hear the words heroin and chic mentioned in the same sentence. But lately the two have been paired, in movies and other pop culture. This shakes me to my very soul, as I recall the private hell that heroin brought to my life for over 20 years. A single decision can determine one's life path. My seminal moment came on my nineteenth birthday. A friend stopped by to help me celebrate. At the time, I'd been experimenting with all kinds of illicit drugs. Marijuana had been the first. Soon the world was a veritable candy store: alcohol, uppers, downers, psychedelics—there was a pharmaceutical cocktail for every mood. Combine this with the invincibility of youth, and life became one long party. Or so it seemed. My true goal was self-anesthetization from the pains of life. On my nineteenth birthday, however, I crossed a further threshold. For the first time, I tried heroin, and the drug became my life partner for the next two decades. At first, there were no meetings in dark alleys or dingy bars. Drug use was easy and attractive. Heroin was just another adventure. A negative experience might have been the best thing to happen on that nineteenth birthday, but that wasn't the case. I felt right at home in the sedated euphoria caused by the drug. The insidious danger of heroin is that in early use, you're in control. You feel you can take it or leave it; therefore, quitting holds no urgency. Year after year passed. I went to school and became a social worker. It was all right; I just needed to use responsibly. Can you believe that? A responsible heroin addict. By age 30, the addiction was a way of life. The pain was great, an all-consuming dull throb of hopelessness and dependence that possessed my life. Greeting the day was a chore of the greatest magnitude. Sometimes I would sleep until 5:00 p.m. because the light was too revealing. I was a creature of the night, a vampire sucking family and friends for all they were worth.
Source: Daniel Zanoza, "Back from the Brink," in A Reader for Developing Writers, 4th ed., Santi Buscemi, Ed., New York, McGraw-Hill, 1999, p. 178.
Selection 6
Introduction to PoetryI ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive.I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to water-ski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.Source: Billy Collins, Sailing Around the Room Alone, New York : Random house, 2001, p. 16.
Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to water-ski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.
Source: Billy Collins, Sailing Around the Room Alone, New York : Random house, 2001, p. 16.
