The Desire To Be Primitive Was Very

What Strip Mining Is To Nature The Art Market Has Become To Culture.

When The War (wwi) Finally Ended It Was Necessary For Both Sides To Maintain, Indeed Even To Inflate, The Myth Of Sacrifice So That The Whole Affair Would Not Be Seen For What It Was: A Meaningless Waste Of Millions Of Lives. Logically, If The Flower Of Youth Had Been Cut Down In Flanders, The Survivors Were Not The Flower: The Dead Were Superior To The Traumatized Living. In This Way, The Virtual Destruction Of A Generation Further Increased The Distance Between The Old And The Young, Between The Official And The Unofficial.

It Is Hard To Think Of Any Work Of Art Of Which One Can Say 'this Saved The Life Of One Jew, One Vietnamese, One Cambodian'. Specific Books, Perhaps; But As Far As One Can Tell, No Paintings Or Sculptures. The Difference Between Us And The Artists Of The 1920's Is That They They Thought Such A Work Of Art Could Be Made. Perhaps It Was A Certain Naivete That Made Them Think So. But It Is Certainly Our Loss That We Cannot.

A Determined Soul Will Do More With A Rusty Monkey Wrench Than A Loafer Will Accomplish With All The Tools In A Machine Shop.

In America, Nostalgia For Things Is Apt To Set In Before They Go.