emperor of ocean park

I have always thought that the far left and the far right needed each other, desperately, for if either one were to vanish the other would lose its reason to exist, a conviction that has freshened in me from year to year, as each grows ever more vehement in its search for somebody to hate. (p. 36)

...and at last arriving, a decade or two later, cynical and bitter, at their cherished career goals, partnerships, professorships, judgeships, whatever kind of ships they dream of sailing, and then looking around at the angry, empty waters and realizing that they have arrived with nothing, absolutely nothing, and wondering what to do with the reast of their wretched lives. (p 109)

Scholars. Every one of us is charged with precisely the same responsibility: to immerse himself in a chosen discipline, and then to teach his students what he happens to discover. (p. 142)

I remember something that Addison, proprietor of several sites, likes to say about the Web: One-third retail, one-third porn, and one-third lies, all of our baser nature in one quick step.

Moral knowledge that remains secret eventually ceases to be knowledge. (p228)

where Bentley is sitting at a computer, playing with a math game in which he collects little pictures of candy if he can zap the numbers that correctly answer the questions dancing around the screen. So we can teach him the virtues of gluttony, greed and violence all at once, while also improving his score on the math SAT he will have to take in about twelve years. (p. 452)

That truth, even moral truth, exists I have no doubt, for I am no relativist; but we weak, fallen humans will never perceive it except imperfectly, a faintly glowing presence toward which we creep through the mists of reason, tradition and faith. (p. 653)

Altogether a good book. About 150 pages too long, a lot of the law school intrigue and some of the family stuff could have been left behind, but good nonetheless. Check out some of Carter's non-fiction work.

next by michael lewis

couple of quotes

A child has time to save himself. To a child, being on the wrong end of the trend is not a sign that it's time to dig in and defend the old position; it's a signal to cut and run. Progress depends on these small acts of treason. p.22

Cedar Grove, New Jersey, was one of those Essex county suburubs defined by the fact that it was not Newark. The real estate prices appeared to rise with the hills. The houses at the bottom of each hill were barely middle class; the houses at the top might fairly be described as opulent; but in some strange way they were all the same house. Even million-dollar homes built on streets with names like Tiffany Court were less upp-class mansions than some middle-class person's idea of upper-class mansions. Indistinguishable from the homes on either side of them - same manicured lawn, same grandiose entryway, same more-crystal-than-crystal chandeliers - they were, in essence, giant tract houses. In Cedar Grove rich just means having more of exactly what you had when you weren't rich. p. 30