405: Reservations Recommended Begins
Reservations Recommended, Preliminaries
This is the cover of the most recent edition of Reservations Recommended:
This is the book’s dedication:
For Mad, Scott, and Alexis
My novel contains Peter Leroy’s memoir. This is his cover:
The book opens with five epigraphs.
Midway along the road of life,
I found myself within a shadowy forest,
For I had lost my way.
— Dante, Inferno
. . . by the time they have reached the middle of their life’s journey few people remember how they have managed to arrive at themselves, at their amusements, their point of view, their wife, character, occupation, and successes, but they cannot help feeling that not much is likely to change any more. . . . Something has had its way with them like a fly-paper with a fly; it has caught them fast, here catching a little hair, there hampering their movements, and has gradually enveloped them, until they lie buried under a thick coating . . .
— Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
You may ask yourself,
“Well, how did I get here?”
And the days go by . . .
— David Byrne and Brian Eno “Once in a Lifetime”
’Tis plain, these useless toys of every kind
. . . little can relieve the laboring mind . . .
. . . every man o’er works his weary will,
To shun himself, and to shake off his ill;
The shaking fit returns, and hangs upon him still.
— Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
The ungrateful greed of the soul makes the creature everlastingly desire varieties of dainty food.
— Epicurus, “Epicurus’s Exhortation”
[to be continued on Wednesday, January 11, 2022]
In Topical Guide 405, Mark Dorset considers Epigraphs and Blurbs and Reviews from this episode.
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