Online Notebook

October 12, 2014

“You have to have some idea of the idle money out there. It can’t all be endowments to the church of one’s choice, mansions and yachts and dog-runs paved with gold or what have you, can it. No, at some point, that’s all over with, has to be left behind … and still there’s this huge mountain of wealth unspent, piling up higher every day, and dear oh dear, whatever’s a businessman to do with it, you see.”

“Hell, send it on to me,” Ray Ipsow put in. “or even to somebody who really needs it, for sure there’s enough of those.”

“That’s not the way it works,” said Scarsdale Vibe.

“So we always hear the plutocracy complaining.”

“Out of a belief, surely fashionable, that merely to need a sum is not to deserve it.”

“Except that in these times, ‘need’ arises directly from criminal acts of the rich, so it ‘deserves’ whatever amount of money will atone for it. Fathomable enough for you?”

“You are a socialist, sir.”

“As anyone not insulated by wealth from the cares of the day is obliged to be. Sir.”

—

Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon, 2006. (via aintgotnoladytronblues)

I’ve had this book since the hardcover was released but the length has always kept me from diving in. Clearly I need to take the plunge already.

(via jonathanbogart)

11:35am | URL: https://tmblr.co/Z-FUay1SzmhTG

(Notes: 41)