Scratch and Sniff or, because it's all been said

I have a strange relationship with Bartlett’s Famous Quotations. We seem to have four or five different editions sitting around the house, the one from 1955 being a bit worse for wear. I’d say it smells a bit like the 1940′s, if I didn’t know better. I also have a strange habit of smelling books in order to ascertain what year they are from.

Depending on how and where they were stored, sniffing the pages can usually give you a pretty accurate idea as to when it was published. Plus, books just smell good. New books aren’t bad, but they don’t have much aroma. Still, I can tell when I walk into a Barnes and Noble on scent alone. Though the ever-present Starbucks may help with that.

But back to the Bartlett’s thing; every day I flip to a random page in Bartlett’s and pick a quote to mull around my brain for the day. Sometimes I will pick an author or two, and take more than one quote with me. This usually happens when I am not in the mood to be serious all day. Or even half the day.

Fitzgerald was today’s random pick: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

The other is curtosey of E.B. White:

“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half the time.”

I’ve gotten some strange looks when I mention the fact that I am reading Bartlett’s. But I don’t find this obsession with Bartlett’s particularly alarming, as most of time time, whatever you want to say has been said better by someone else.

I was raised in the tradition of these expat writers, to some degree. E.B. White doesn’t exactly count, and I’m on the fence about James Thurber’s expat status, but I’ve always grouped them with the lot. I still remember having Hemmingway, Thurber and White read to me as a child.

White isn’t that surprising of a choice, but James Thurber’s Fables for Our Time probably messed me up for good.

"Early to rise and early to bed
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead.”

It’s possible that I was a rather sarcastic and fatalistic 6-year old.