Jun 19, 2012

And the hope is not false...


"But, despite all the vocational advisers, the pamphlets pointing out to them what good money you can earn if you invest in some solid technical training - pharmacology, let's say, or accountancy, or the varied opportunities offered by the vast field of electronics - there are still, incredibly enough, quite a few of them who persist in writing poems, novels, plays!... Here in their midst, George feels a sort of vertigo. Oh God, what will become of them all? What chance have they? Ought I to yell out to them, right now, here, that it's hopeless?

But George knows he can't do that. Because, absurdly, inadequately, in spite of himself almost, he is a representative of the hope. And the hope is not false. No. It's just that George is like a man trying to sell a real diamond for a nickel, on the street. The diamond is protected from all but the tiniest few, because the great hurrying majority can never stop to dare to believe that it could conceivably be real."

- from Christopher Isherwood's wonderful A Single Man, 1964.

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