Yan Sham-Shackleton's Blog

The Decay Of Lying: An Observation by Oscar Wilde

VIVIAN. Who wants to be consistent? The dullard and the
doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to
the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice.
Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word
'Whim.' Besides, my article is really a most salutary and valuable
warning. If it is attended to, there may be a new Renaissance of
Art.

via www.online-literature.com

Yan Sham-Shackleton

My first love fancied himself as Sartre; I by default -de Beauvoir. 22 years later my character is rambling about their tumultuous, desperately unfair, psychologically damaging (to her) relationship while I listen to Velvet Underground. I will no doubt delete this. But I confess I still find it romantic to wear a black turtle neck and I do it often. I will never move on from my first philosophical-political romance.

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Stand By Your Man : The New Yorker

Jean-Paul Sartre preferred the company of women. As one would expect of the great advocate of transparency, he discussed his reasons frankly. “First of all, there is the physical element. There are of course ugly women, but I prefer those who are pretty,” he explained in an interview for the documentary “Sartre by Himself.” “Then, there is the fact that they’re oppressed, so they seldom bore you with shop talk. . . . I enjoy being with a woman because I’m bored out of my mind when I have to converse in the realm of ideas.” “Sartre by Himself” was filmed in 1972, when Sartre was sixty-six; his interviewers were loyal associates from the journal he founded after the war, Les Temps Modernes. None of them encouraged him to expand on the topic, since Simone de Beauvoir was present, and everyone in the room understood that the legend of their relationship was in her keeping. But everyone in the room also knew that Sartre liked the company of women because he devoted much of his time to the business of seducing them.

via www.newyorker.com

The Decay Of Lying: An Observation by Oscar Wilde

A DIALOGUE. Persons: Cyril and Vivian. Scene: the Library of a
country house in Nottinghamshire.

CYRIL (coming in through the open window from the terrace). My
dear Vivian, don't coop yourself up all day in the library. It is
a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a
mist upon the woods, like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go
and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature.

VIVIAN. Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost
that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more
than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and
that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in
her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that
the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art
really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious
crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished
condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as
Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a
landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate
for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we
should have no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our
gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the
infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be
found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy,
or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.

CYRIL. Well, you need not look at the landscape. You can lie on
the grass and smoke and talk.

via www.online-literature.com