The Holy Barbarians


2025 06 25    |    etc    no date    2024 +    2025    entries    home

Today's bus book is Lawrence Lipton's The Holy Barbarisns.

When the barbarians appear on the frontiers of a civilization it is a sign of a crisis in that civilization. If the barbarians come, not with weapons of war but with the songs and icons of peace, it is a sign that the crisis is one of a spiritual nature.

[...]

Nor the politically oriented alienation of the thirties. The present generation has taken note of all these and passed on beyond them to a total rejection of the whole society, and that, in present-day America, means the business civilization.

[...]

this is not just another alienation. It is a deep-going change, a revolution under t
he ribs.


She says, rhetorically speaking, if he were writing this today would he have put this any differently.


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