Ron, I remember reading Durrell's work back in the late sixties, and a
quote from one of the four books still sticks with me. I'll paraphrase my
recollection of and see if you can find me the original passage. It is
relevent to the learning organization work, so I'll share it with
everyone:
(allow for significant paraphrasing due to limited memory...)
"Questions are a lot like fish nets--the type of net influences the kind
of fish that are caught."
It seems to me that the issues of dialogue, advocacy, and inquiry are all
associated with this insight.
Let me know if it surfaces as you go through the books and thanks for the
other quotation as well.
Tobin
quereau@austin.cc.tx.us
On Tue, 8 Aug 1995 Ron2785@eworld.com wrote:
> (Ron's msg forwarded to the list at his request by your host,
> rkarash@world.std.com)
>
> I've just started reading -- belatedly, Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet" --
> a book (or books) that my mother went on and on about when they first came
> out. Aside from what reading this book now tells me about my mother, it's
> kind of stunning to have the narrator talk, in "Justine," about returning
> "link by link along the iron chain of memory" and then to say: "I spoke of
> the uselessness of art but added nothing truthful about its consolations.
> The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this -- that
> only _there_, in the silences of the painter or the writer can reality be
> reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side. Our common
> actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the
> cloth-of-gold -- the meaning of the pattern."
>
> That last sentence is really something! We might even be able to think
> about it in a bunch of contexts --
>
> Cheers.
>
> --
> Ron Mallis
> Ron2785@eworld.com
>