Library / Literature & Fiction
A Far Country — Complete
- Pages
- about 614
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 11 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
My name is Hugh Paret. I was a corporation lawyer, but by no means a
typical one, the choice of my profession being merely incidental, and
due, as will be seen, to the accident of environment. The book I am
about to write might aptly be called The Autobiography of a Romanticist.
In that sense, if in no other, I have been a typical American, regarding
my country as the happy hunting-ground of enlightened self-interest, as
a function of my desires. Whether or not I have completely got rid of
this romantic virus I must leave to those the aim of whose existence
is to eradicate it from our literature and our life. A somewhat Augean
task!
I have been impelled therefore to make an attempt at setting forth, with
what frankness and sincerity I may, with those powers of selection of
which I am capable, the life I have lived in this modern America; the
passions I have known, the evils I have done. I endeavour to write a
biography of the inner life; but in order to do this I shall have to
relate those causal experiences of the outer existence that take place
in the world of space and time, in the four walls of the home, in the
school and university, in the noisy streets, in the realm of business
and politics. I shall try to set down, impartially, the motives that
have impelled my actions, to reveal in some degree the amazing mixture
of good and evil which has made me what I am to-day: to avoid the tricks
of memory and resist the inherent desire to present myself other and
better than I am. Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled
child who believes in miracles, whose needs are mostly baubles, whose
desires are dreams. Expediency is his motto. Innocent of a knowledge
of the principles of the universe, he lives in a state of ceaseless
activity, admitting no limitations, impatient of all restrictions.
What he wants, he wants very badly indeed.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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