I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful; for not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use; but there is such a uniformity in the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any possibility of good or ill but is common to human kind. A great part of the time of those who are placed at the greatest distance by fortune or by temper must unavoidably pass in the same manner; and though, when the claims of nature are satisfied, caprice and vanity and accident begin to produce discriminations and peculiarities, yet the eye is not very heedful or quick which cannot discover the same causes still terminating their influence in the same effect, though sometimes accelerated, sometimes retarded, or perplexed by multiplied combinations. We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.
–Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, #60, in A Johnson Sampler, edited by Henry Darcy Curwen
I must find a small cheap comfortable apartment of my own.
I must stop putting off looking for any kind of a job— and go out to get what 1 can. 1 think maybe a totally non-literary job.
What do I want to do in the world aside from ‘‘be a poet.”
Must stop playing with my mind, with my life.
Unknown pains and suffering of trial and weakness in competition and fight for moneymaking ideas.
Place in Society. I have no function in the world I live in. I am oppressed by my own inaction and cowardice & conceit & cringing, running away from life.
What will I make happen to my life?
–Allen Ginsberg, June 30, 1952, Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties, edited by Gordon Ball
