Thursday, May 14, 2009

in my experience i have found this to be true of all things

He tended to say, "It's very simple," and then after twenty minutes chuckle a bit as the threads unravelled and his narrative became "Tristam Shandy." It could be exhilirating to take on the welter of causation and consequence, but the clarity was fleeting, more of a mood than an all-encompassing grasp; there must be an endorphin that's triggered by the call-and-response recapitulation of a giant variegated clusterfuck. When it dissipates, you're left only with the conviction that our troubles are deep.
(emphasis mine, link [subscription only])

1 comment:

einnocent said...

Hi! I'm glad you quoted Paumgarten here. This was my very favorite sentence in all of 2009 and now it will be easy to periodically copy/paste. I don't know what it is, but it seems a (small) handful of people got really tickled by it. Great moment in sentence history, indeed!