Topical Guide 158
Mark Dorset
Contests; Competitions
THIS IS THE STORY of two contests in which I competed in the fifth grade. One, probably the more important, was a competition for the love of Veronica McCall. …
Little Follies, “Take the Long Way Home”
When a twelfth-century youth fell in love, he did not take three paces backwards, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head—the other man’s head, I mean—then that proved that his—the first fellow’s girl—was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head—not his own, you know, but the other fellow’s—the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who—well, if he broke his head, then his girl—not the other fellow’s, but the fellow who was the—Look here, if A broke B’s head, then A’s girl was a pretty girl; but if B broke A;’s head, then A’s girl wasn’t a pretty girl, but B’s girl was.
Love: Its Nature
Love: Varieties of
In the manner of a chowder, which is a complex and subtle mixture of elemental foodstuffs, the emotion that we call love is a bewildering and varied concoction of more elemental emotions: lust, friendship, curiosity, guilt, and fear, among others. Tastes in chowders vary from person to person, from nation to nation, from region to region; one’s own taste in chowder changes over the course of one’s lifetime, and it may even shift from day to day. So it is with tastes in love. Some like theirs chock full of voluptuous scarlet tomatoes; others prefer something rarer, more exotic, heady with saffron; and still others like theirs bland and sturdy, with cream and potatoes.
Little Follies, “Take the Long Way Home”
All these young men are … under the feet of Fortune, yet more than equal to Fate. Always ready to mount and ride an if, witty as a feuilleton, blithe as only those can be that are deep in debt and drink deep to match, and finally—for here I come to my point—hot lovers, and what lovers! … Eclectic of all things in love, they will serve up a passion to a woman’s order; their hearts are like a bill of fare in a restaurant. … They have by heart their chapters—Love-Taste, Love Passion, Love-Caprice, Love-Crystallised, and more than all, Love-Transient.
Honoré de Balzac, A Prince of Bohemia (translated by Ellen Marriage)
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