quotes from "More Die of Heartbreak"

2021.09.21
Years ago, when I was in college or just out, a woman on a plane gave me a copy of Saul Bellow's "More Die of Heartbreak". I never got around to reading it until now (and even that in ebook form).

Some synchronicity there in reading it now, decades, later- like one of the themes is listening to some of the big messages from our subconscious-self, our second-self, a concept which has been much on my mind as of late.
Why did I want to live in the Midwest anyway? Such a cultural throwback, unconscious of its own philistinism. "Out there they can't even spell the name of Mammon, which is just the way Mammon likes it."
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"
Texts are tricky that way. Because you've read about philistines you may conclude that you can't be a philistine yourself.
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"
Anyway, Uncle took to Fyodorov, whose position was that death lies behind all human problems. The earth is a graveyard and the one and only project of humanity is to reclaim it for life.
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"
[The symbolist poet Andrei Bely] also said towards the end of his life, speaking of the women he had known, "Not a single one of them deserved me." I can't imagine Benn saying that. Those words, in his voice, would be impossible. And yet he might have been justified in saying it. So many modern thinkers agree that "overvaluation" is the secret of love.
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"
God is a verb.
Buckminster Fuller
If you're afraid of loneliness don't marry.
Chekhov
Lev Navrozov, who is nobody's fool, says that for irrational and purely emotional behavior, America is in the twentieth century what Russia was in the nineteenth.
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"
We human creatures should be at play before the Lord--the higher the play, the more pleasing to God.
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"
"Let her sleep herself out. Nobody, in the ultimate sense, short of death, really gets the rest he needs."
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"
The secret motive of the absentminded is to be innocent while guilty. Absentmindedness is spurious innocence.
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"
The funny part was how rich she was in physical blessings. They counted for more than the disharmony of sexuality and stature. A bug from Mecca might have made a pilgrimage and crossed all of Asia and the whole Pacific just to take a bite of her.
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"
"There are some who can't wait to get rid of themselves. Whereas others can't bear to let anybody go."
Saul Bellow, "More Die of Heartbreak"