Blair's Reviews > I Thought of Daisy

A well-written novel that is partly inspired by Proust, but less dreamlike and more natural in nature. Two quotes that resonated with me for different reasons:

From page 6: "In college, I had read of the Russia of the Tsars as one reads about the Middle Ages; but now I had been forced to recognize, even among Americans, and as one of the strongest instincts of society, that horrifying contempt of a dominating class for the lives of those they dominate. So that, by the time I had got out of the Army, I had required a scorn for the pursuit of money, position or rank: the people who cared for such things seemed now to me sinister or childish. It appeared impossible ever again to accept conventional values complacently, to acquiesce in the prosperous inertia and the provincial ignorance of America. One could never go back again now to living indifferently or trivially; one was afraid of lending oneself to some offense against that unhappy humanity which one shared with other men."

From page 209: "I looked for the moon, but it was gone. I craned around the side of the couch and saw it low, vaporish and gray, as if dissolving in the ichor of dawn."