American+Decadance

=__**American Decadence and Anonymity **__=



 "West Egg, especially still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and lusterless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman's name and no one cares. After Gatsby's death the East was haunted for me like that distorted beyond my eyes' power of correction." - F. Scott Fitzgerald (//The Great Gatsby,// 176)



=**"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." **= = = =**- Oscar Wilde **=

  

media type="custom" key="804767" Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made Exchanging all precious gifts But you'd better lift your diamond ring you'd better pawn it babe You used to be so amused At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal. - **Bob Dylan**   , Excerpt from //Like A Rolling Stone//

= = = = = = =**CITY OF ORGIES**=   City of orgies, walks and joys, City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day makeNot the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your spectacles, repay me, Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the wharves, Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows with goods in them, Nor to converse with learn'd persons, or bear my share in the soiree or feast; Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and swift flash of eyes offering me love, Offering response to my own - these repay me, Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.

-Walt Whitman

American Decadence Reflection The Great Big Sperit American Gospel The Melting Pot