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UNIFORM_AND_SHAPELESS

                                    September 11, 2006

      " ... ' I am dismayed at the world I wander.
        The gas pumps, the Woolworths, the diner:
        you would not conceive that places could be
        absolutely uniform and yet no have a shape."

        -- p. 593, Droyt (a son of the architect Laura Alger)
           Section 9, Chapter 23 "Our Village Meeting",
           Part 3 "Scenes of Our Village",
           of Book 4: "The Holy Terror"

           Paul Goodman
           EMPIRE_CITY




          "Laura thought the house was a jail.
          It was worse than her brother's,
          because she had made it for herself.
          Whatever you wished, the house was
          planned for it; and when you no
          longer wanted it, you found yourself
          trapped into the motions that made
          you want it again -- but something
          was wrong.

          "It was a Garden City; nothing much
          new could happen there.

          "In the end it turned out that what
          everybody wanted, and she also, was
          action and not her Garden City at
          all: action, or at least activity,
          or at least being activated.  This
          activism, to which they gave
          themselves with a restrained fury,
          was regulated even more carefully
          than a Garden City."
                                                      The unconsciousness of
          -- p.189                                    the why and the how of
          Section 4 "Laura's Handy Boys",             the world around them
          Chapter  6 "Two Women: Laura",              becomes disastrous when
          Part 1, "A Weakness of the Ego"             they attempt to design
          of Book 2  "The State of Nature"            a new world.

          Paul Goodman                                Ignorance poured
          EMPIRE_CITY                                 into concrete. 
 
                                                           UNINTENDED




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