Ursula quotes Carl: If we've been bamboozled long
enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the
bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding
out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us.
Like jihad, this saying works both ways. If you
get bamboozled long enough, you also tend to
reject any evidence that you're NOT being
bamboozled. It's more ego-syntonic to assume that
there's only bamboozling going on.
Eric
___
Literature was born not the day when a boy crying
wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal
valley with a big gray wolf at his heels:
literature was born on the day when a boy came
crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind
him. That the poor little fellow because he lied
too often was finally eaten up by a real beast is
quite incidental. But here is what is important.
Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in
the tall story there is a shimmering go-between.
That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.
-Vladimir Nabokov, "Good Readers and Good Writers"
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