A Commonplace Book

We do not talk--we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.

The saddest sight of all is the automobiles parked outside the mills and factories. The automobile stands out in my mind as the very symbol of falsity and illusion. There they are, thousands upon thousands of them, in such profusion that it would seem as if no man were too poor to own one.... They don't realize that when the American worker steps out of his shining tin chariot he delivers himself body and soul to the most stultifying labor a man can perform.

They don't see that the best possible conditions (in American lingo) mean the biggest profits for the boss, the utmost servitude for the worker, the greatest confusion and disillusionment for the public in general.

...we go about our business or we take to dope, the dope which is worse by far than opium or hashish--I mean the newspapers, the radio, the movies. Real dope gives you the freedom to dream your own dreams; the American kind forces you to swallow the perverted dreams of men whose only ambition is to hold their job regardless of what they are bidden to do.

We'll get the knack of it soon. We'll learn how to annihilate the whole planet in the wink of an eye--just wait and see.

To live beyond the pale, to work for the pleasure of working, to grow old gracefully while retaining one's faculties, one's enthusiasms, one's self-respect, one has to establish other values than those endorsed by the mob.

The wealthy can always be induced to support another museum; the academies can always be counted upon to provide us with watch-dogs and hyenas; the critics can always be bought who will kill what is fresh and vital; the educators can always be rallied who will misinform the young as to the meaning of art; the vandals can always be instigated to destroy what is powerful and disturbing.

The poor can think of nothing but food and rent problems; the rich can amuse themselves by collecting safe investments furnished them by the ghouls who traffic in the sweat and blood of artists; the middle classes pay admission to gape and criticize, vain about their half-baked knowledge of art and too timid to champion the men whom in their hearts they fear, knowing that the real enemy is not the man above, whom they must toady to, but the rebel who exposes in word or paint the rottenness of the edifice which they, spineless middle class, are obliged to support.