Tuesday, December 12, 2023
At One in Our Views
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), Limbo (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1920), pp. 260-261:
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The owner of the shop was standing in the doorway, a little man, grizzle-bearded and with eyes very active round the corners of the spectacles that bridged his long, sharp nose.
"Trade is good?" I inquired.
"Better in my grandfather's day,” he told me, shaking his head sadly.
"We grow progressively more Philistine," I suggested.
"It is our cheap press. The ephemeral overwhelms the permanent, the classical."
"This journalism," I agreed, "or call it rather this piddling quotidianism, is the curse of our age."
"Fit only for—" He gesticulated clutchingly with his hands as though seeking the word.
"For the fire."
The old man was triumphantly emphatic with his, "No: for the sewer." I laughed sympathetically at his passion. "We are delightfully at one in our views," I told him.
