Somehow I missed it when everyone was reading it, but just last week I read, “My Name Is Lucy Barton” by Elizabeth Strout. And I read Lore Segal’s short story collection, “Ladies’ Lunch.” In both of them I admired the ease with which the author offered her words, the tone almost a personal confiding that leaves you with the misguided thought that anyone—I?—could do the same. Could write stories filled with casual intimacies and asides that add up to wisdom. Not likely, but isn’t that what art is?
Anyhow, I will share two quotes from Lucy that I had to write down. I say from Lucy because the novel, written in the first person, feels more like possibly Lucy Barton’s writing than Elizabeth Strout’s. But again, art.
So, the first quote is this: “It has been my experience throughout life that the people who have been given the most by our government==education, food, rent subsidies—are the ones who are most apt to find fault with the whole idea of government.”
Here I have to mention that yesterday I visited Mount Vernon and, among other things, thought about the revolt against “taxation without representation,” which, of course, I am reminded of also when I see a District of Columbia license plate. And not for the first time I thought about how the colonists were fighting for the right not to be free of taxes which are needed to pay for all those “common good” things we want and need, but to be free to tax themselves. Right?
The second quote is this: “It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”
Those are the two quotes I wrote down. I’ll just leave them here.