"Mediocre must be, so most-excellent can bloom. So I shall be the best mediocre there is and fight all who say, Slide under, sink back, dust-wallow, let brambles scurry over your living grave. I shall protest the roving apeman tribes, the sheep-people munching the far fields prayed on by the feudal land-baron wolves who rarefy themselves in the few skyscraper summits and horde unremembered foods."
From The Chicago Abyss, by R. Bradbury
"The More you drive...the less----"
Time to rest...
The "sheep people"...when was this book written? Coulda been yesterday. Some shit never changes. That's good and bad.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your rest.
Simon and Schuster published the book in 1964. The version in the photo is from Bantam 1965... 6th printing. To the Chicago Abyss was published in The Time Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1963 by Mercury Press. Jean Gray ('a' not 'e') was written on the inside cover. Why is anyone's guess. Book was purchased, like most things, secondhand.
DeleteMore importantly, that 'coulda been yesterday' feeling strikes a chord.
That passage only stuck out because of something Kamo wrote shortly after something from 222. Both used the term 'sheeple'. It's not in the quick-search online etymological dictionary. Suppose it is only a matter of time before it is.
Kind of odd the way the mind picks out things, what it notices. But it does notice and I try not to let that bother me so much. Most likely, it bothers other people more than it does me.
Back to rest.
Ahh, the sheeple... There are sheeple who read books about sheeple and scoff at them and people who write books about sheeple, but don't consider themselves sheeple... Even though we all fall in with the rest of the herd at some point (or flock - which I don't like because it implies there's a shepherd ), as long as we can still look at a group of others and say, "Man, you're all a bunch o' f@#kin' sheep," we are not totally lost little lemmings...
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of shepherds... up until maybe a few days ago, I had no idea who Edward Bernays was. Now, I almost wish I didn't.
Delete