Sam is a repetitive, comic process that merely marks time: he gets nowhere, but then he doesn’t want to get anywhere. Although there is no possibility of any real change in Sam, he never stops changing: Sam stays there inside Sam, getting less and less like the rest of mankind and more and more like Sam, Sam squared, Sam cubed, Sam to the nth.
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
“An Unread Book”, p. 40
- work
- The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
- year
- 1969
- locator
- p. 40
Cite this record
“Sam is a repetitive, comic process that merely marks time: h…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-B01AF6473C. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/b01af6473c
More from Randall Jarrell
You give me the feeling that the universe Was made by something more than human For something less than human. But I identify myself, as always, With something that there's something wrong with, With something human.
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...we like somebody who succeeds with such bad conscience, and who seems to wish that he had the nerve to be a failure or, better still, something to which the terms success and failure don’t apply — as when Mallory said, about Everest: “Success is meaningless here.”