He tries to read a novel, something about privileged people having trouble getting along with each other in exotic locations. He throws it against the wall. Something has broken in him. His appetite for human self-regard is dead.
Clipping
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
That night, lying in his bag against the Earth, Adam wants to head back to Santa Cruz to finish his thesis. Anyone can dig a trench, pile up an earthwork, fasten himself to a lockdown. But only he can complete his project and describe, in measured facts, why people might care whether a forest lives or dies. But he stays on another day, becoming something new—his own object of study.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
When she speaks again, the softness shatters him. “I never knew how strong a drug other people are.” “The strongest. Or at least the most widely abused.” “How long does it take to … detox?” He considers. “Nobody’s ever clean.”
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
He reads the encyclopedia article on mental disorders. The section on diagnosing schizophrenia contains this sentence: Beliefs should not be considered delusional if they are in keeping with societal norms.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
Falling asleep, he reads the same paragraph a dozen times; the words turn into twirling things, like winged seeds spinning in the air.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
They christen themselves with forest names that night, in the soft drizzle of the redwoods, on a blanket of needles. The game seems childish, at first. But all of art is childish, all storytelling, all human hope and fear.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
when you spend all your hours with horses, your soul expands a bit until the ways of men reveal themselves to be no more than a costume party you’d be well advised not to take at face value.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
In fact, it’s Douggie’s growing conviction that the greatest flaw of the species is its overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth. Single biggest influence on what a body will or won’t believe is what nearby bodies broadcast over the public band. Get three people in the room and they’ll decide that the law of gravity is evil and should be rescinded because one of their uncles got shit-faced and fell off the roof.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
Once, the fate of the human race might have been in the hands of the well-adjusted, the social ones, the masters of emotion. Now all that is getting upgraded.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
An old man, I want only peace. The things of this world mean nothing. I know no good way to live and I can’t stop getting lost in my thoughts, my ancient forests. The wind that waves the pines loosens my belt. The mountain moon lights me as I play my lute. You ask: how does a man rise or fall in this life? The fisherman’s song flows deep under the river.