一休禅诗

当你笑的时候，你的灵魂和你的身体是合一的，它们一起笑。当你在思考，你的身体和灵魂是分开的。

我们内心的冲突

不只注意那些让他预见失败的因素，还要注意那些让他始终害怕失败的因素

偶然的创造

我们碰巧成为自己，但我们可以不止于此。

如何读，为什么读

Melville was not a Christian, and tended to identify with the ancient Gnostic heresy, in which the creator God of this world is a bungler and impostor, while the true God, called the Stranger or Alien God, is exiled somewhere in the outer regions of the cosmos.Early, major Faulkner is a kind of unknowing Gnostic; West, Pynchon, and McCarthy in their different ways are very knowing indeed. My subject is how to read their best fiction, and why, and not how to instruct my own readers in ancient heterodoxies (at least not here!), but the first sequence of four novels that I have chosen, in the wake of Melville, achieve their negative splendors in modes parallel to Gnostic visions, as we will see.