“Huck [Finn] and Tom [Sawyer] represent two viable models of the American Character. They exist side by side in every American and every American action. America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck. The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn't do it. It looks at inequity and says: All my life I have busted my butt to get where I am, so don't come crying to me. Tom likes kings, codified nobility, unquestioned privilege. Huck likes people, fair play, spreading the truck around. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Whereas Huck hopes, Tom presumes. Whereas Huck cares, Tom denies. These two parts of the American Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the nation, and come to think of it, these two parts of the World Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the world, and the hope of the nation and of the world is to embrace the Huck part and send the Tom part back up the river, where it belongs.”
― The Braindead Megaphone
― The Braindead Megaphone
“He experienced a familiar comfort being in the presence of another person's unknowable pain. More than any landscape, this place felt like home.”
― You Are Not a Stranger Here
― You Are Not a Stranger Here
“Some people we glimpse as chasms, briefly but deeply, even to the death of us. Others are shallow places you never seem to get across.”
― Already Dead: A California Gothic
― Already Dead: A California Gothic
“What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.”
― Oblivion: Stories
― Oblivion: Stories
“I should have known […] I am the rain. […] I am the land […] and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.”
― To a God Unknown
― To a God Unknown
Dustin Saunders’s 2023 Year in Books
Take a look at Dustin Saunders’s Year in Books. The good, the bad, the long, the short—it’s all here.
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