literature – Page 100 – A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity

RKS Literature: Crafty Scoundrels and Heaven (Dickens)

“Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather – for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man – that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrow ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of the day, and keep aContinue reading “RKS Literature: Crafty Scoundrels and Heaven (Dickens)”

RKS Literature: Love and The Imagination: Charles Dickens

“Love, however, is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination, which has a long memory, and will survive for a considerable amount of time on very slight and sparing food. Thus, it is, that it often attains its most luxuriant growth in separation and under circumstances of the utmost difficulty; and thus itContinue reading “RKS Literature: Love and The Imagination: Charles Dickens”

RKS Literature: The Three Stages of Intoxication (Dickens)

“Most public characters have their failing; and the truth is that Mr. Snevellicci was a little bit addicted to drinking; or, if the whole truth must be told, that he was scarcely ever sober. He knew in his cups three distinct stages of intoxication-the dignified-the quarrelsome-the amorous. When professionally engaged he never got beyond theContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Three Stages of Intoxication (Dickens)”

RKS Literature: Dreams (Dickens)

“Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport earth in the night season and melt away at the first beam of sun, which lights grim care and stern reality to their pilgrimage through the world.” Charles Dickens, “Nicholas Nickleby”, 1839

RKS Literature: Child Abuse in 1839 England at Wackford Squeers School for Unwanted Boys (Charles Dickens)

“Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with countenances of old men, deformities with irons on their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long meagre legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together; there were the bleary eyed, the hare-lip, the crooked foot, and every uglinessContinue reading “RKS Literature: Child Abuse in 1839 England at Wackford Squeers School for Unwanted Boys (Charles Dickens)”

RKS Literature: The Great Muffin Scam (Charles Dickens)

“He had visited the houses of the poor in the various districts of London and had found them destitute of the slightest vestige of a muffin, which there appeared to much reason to believe some of these indigent persons did not taste from year’s end to year’s end. He had found that among muffin sellersContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Great Muffin Scam (Charles Dickens)”

RKS Literature: Being Shamed for Being Different (Ken Kesey)

“I discovered at an early age that I was-shall we be kind and say different? It’s a better more general word than the other one. I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick. It wasn’t the practices, I don’t think, it was the feeling that the great, deadlyContinue reading “RKS Literature: Being Shamed for Being Different (Ken Kesey)”

RKS Literature: Wandering Around in a Daze: Electric Shock Therapy (Ken Kesey)

“ There had been times when I wandered around in a daze for as long as two weeks after a shock treatment, living in that foggy jumbled blur which is a whole lot like the ragged edge of sleep, that grey zone between light and dark, or between sleeping and waking or living and dying,Continue reading “RKS Literature: Wandering Around in a Daze: Electric Shock Therapy (Ken Kesey)”

RKS Literature: Aggravate Your Adversaries (Ken Kesey)

“Even McMurphy doesn’t seem to know he has been fogged in. If he does, he makes sure not to let on that he’s bothered by it. He’s making sure none of the staff see him bothered by anything: he knows that there’s no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who’s trying to makeContinue reading “RKS Literature: Aggravate Your Adversaries (Ken Kesey)”

RKS 2023 Literature: The Tight-Smiled Fury of Big Nurse (Ken Kesey)

“The Big Nurse tends to get real put out if something keeps her outfit from running like a smooth, accurate, precision-made machine. The slightest thing messy or out of kilter or in the way ties her into a little white knot of tight-smiled fury. She walks around with that same doll smile crimped between herContinue reading “RKS 2023 Literature: The Tight-Smiled Fury of Big Nurse (Ken Kesey)”