Southern Literature

At times I have extolled the virtues of living in the South, but one piece of the South that all can sample even from great distances is the literature. Faulkner is a giant, but I also like the imagery that Thomas Wolfe was able to create. So, in an effort to combat the fluffy stuffed animals of Valentine's Day, I offer this passage from Look Homeward, Angel (1929).

"And left alone to sleep within a shuttered room, with the thick
sunlight printed in bars upon the floor, unfathomable loneliness
and sadness crept through him: he saw his life down the solemn
vista of a forest aisle, and he knew he would always be the sad
one: caged in that little round of skull, imprisoned in that
beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down
lonely passages.  Lost.  He understood that men were forever
strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know any
one, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to
life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a
stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we
escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may
kiss us, what heart may warm us.  Never, never, never, never,
never."

I wish Hallmark might print this one a card.

- Jud