RKS literature – Page 13 – A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity

RKS Literature: Outraged by a Grin (Joseph Conrad)

“Every mental state, even madness, has its equilibrium based on self esteem. Its disturbance causes unhappiness; and Captain Hagberd lived amongst a scheme of settled notions which it pained him to feel disturbed by people’s grins. Yes, people’s grins were awful. They hinted at something wrong, but what? He could not tell; and this strangerContinue reading “RKS Literature: Outraged by a Grin (Joseph Conrad)”

RKS Literature: Why One Must Defect from the USSR (Vladimir Rott)

“An ordinary person in the USSR has no prospects except for being trapped in misery and trudging directly toward the grave. All of the friends and even casual acquaintances we talked to were in a bleak mood: there was nothing ahead, just emptiness. No goals to set, nothing to look forward to. We knew theContinue reading “RKS Literature: Why One Must Defect from the USSR (Vladimir Rott)”

RKS Literature: Beware of Those Mean Soft Chaps (Joseph Conrad)

“High spirited husbands were the easiest to manage. These mean, soft chaps, that you would think butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, were the ones to make woman thoroughly miserable.” Joseph Conrad, “Tomorrow” , 1902.

RKS Literature: Mrs. Hosea Hussey’s Nantucket Clam Chowder (Herman Melville)

“However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazelnuts, the whole enriched with butter, and salted pork cutContinue reading “RKS Literature: Mrs. Hosea Hussey’s Nantucket Clam Chowder (Herman Melville)”

RKS Literature: Who are these People from Nantucket? (Herman Melville)

“The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships, to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. HeContinue reading “RKS Literature: Who are these People from Nantucket? (Herman Melville)”

RKS Literature: Christians Both Wicked and Miserable (Herman Melville)

“But, alas! The practices of whaleman soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor: and seeing what the sailors did there, and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in thatContinue reading “RKS Literature: Christians Both Wicked and Miserable (Herman Melville)”

RKS Literature: The Pulpit as the Prow of a Whaling Ship (Herman Melville)

“What could be more full of meaning? -For the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first decried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the GodContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Pulpit as the Prow of a Whaling Ship (Herman Melville)”

RKS Literature: The Women of New Bedford and Salem (Herman Melville)

“And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match the bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk,Continue reading “RKS Literature: The Women of New Bedford and Salem (Herman Melville)”

RKS Literature: The Gold Rush of Whaling in New Bedford (Herman Melville)

“There weekly arrive in this town scores of Green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are green as the Green Mountains whence theyContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Gold Rush of Whaling in New Bedford (Herman Melville)”

RKS Literature: Timid Warrior Whalemen at Breakfast (Herman Melville)

“These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstances that after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set ofContinue reading “RKS Literature: Timid Warrior Whalemen at Breakfast (Herman Melville)”