One cannot but feel sorrow for people who think that by permanently disfiguring themselves they are somehow declaring their independence or expressing their individuality. The tattoo has a profound meaning: the superficiality of modern man's existence.Anthony Daniels is the real name of the pseudonymous Theodore Dalrymple, a fact useful in tracking down the scattered online essays of this extraordinary doctor and writer.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, September 23, 2004
Dalrymple on Tattoos
It's a few years old, but this essay on tattoos by Theodore Dalrymple is still worth reading. A sample: