One of the two epigraphs to David Foster Wallace's early story, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way", is as follows: "As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us. Only very minor literature aims at apocalypse -- Anthony Burgess" (from p. 232 of Girl With the Curious Hair). What a great, and rich, quotation. So, when I doing some doodling around with parts of that story, I wanted to see the context for the Burgess quotation, and I couldn't find an original reference. But, I am not terribly well oriented with Burgess' work, so I thought I would put this out to the rest of you: Does this quotation exist?
I own a t-shirt that has the following quotation from Adorno: "Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals." One of my favorite things about this quotation is that it doesn't exist. Adorno never said it (though he said a few things like it). According to Witt-Stahl, the false quotation attributed to Adorno comes from PETA's Holocaust On Your Plate campaign, and the only justification given being poor organization by PETA researchers. (h/t to the Witt-Stahl article goes to this wonderful article by Marco Maurizi). Anyway, in some of my early grad school conference papers, I used this false quotation, and I have been a little hyper sensitive ever since then.
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The phrase "minor literature" shows up in Burgess' review of Terminal Visions in the Times Literary Supplement. The other quoted words seem to fit the same "feel" as the Wallace quote, so that might be where it is from.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ROaYUNVsUWcC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=anthony+burgess+%22minor+literature%22&source=bl&ots=2FAmo1Jw-E&sig=M39LmEwVM3RwhLLgNp-eGonfJ3I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X9TdT5edI5Ku8QSm7tjXCg&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=anthony%20burgess%20%22minor%20literature%22&f=false
Re: the Adorno quote, Paola Cavalieri actually cites it in a recent article of hers (called "Do we need Continental Philosophy?" -- and yeah, the article is pretty bad...) in the New Centennial Review (the recent special issue on "Animals and Theory." She uses this possibly reference for it:
Blanke, Christa. 1995. Da krähte der Hahn—Kirche für Tiere? Eine Streitschrift. Eschbach,
Markgräflerland: Verlag am Eschbach. p. 28
I have no idea whether this book is any good, and the fact that Cavalieri cites someone else rather than Adorno himself to establish that he did indeed say that gives me reason to doubt that the quote is real.
More interestingly, however, she cites a passage in Minima Moralia where Adorno says something a bit similar, though not as direct as the Auschwitz quote:
“The possibility of pogroms is decided in the moment
when the gaze of a fatally-wounded animal falls on a human being.”
Cavalieri says this appears on page 68 of the 1978 edition of MM.
Thanks EJ, and btw, I hope you are well.
The Blanke citation is the same as Charles Patterson, and usually the ultimate source of this quotation. The weird thing, btw, is the page number here, which I assume is a typo. Usually the page number is either 48, or 48-49. While I have not been able to get the book in toto, from the internet (several different places) here is the German: "Theodor W. Adorno soll gesagt haben: 'Auschwitz beginnt da, wo jemand auf dem Schlachthof steht und denkt: Es sind ja nur Tiere.'" Or, "Theodor W. Adorno is supposed to have said:" etc.
There is not citation for this quotation. This may be ground zero for the quotation. Anyway, I think the Minima Moralia quotation is usually considered what this faux-quotation comes from.
Also, how do I always miss these special editions on animals? I will go check it out.
This article talks about the source of the Burgess quotation. http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/critical-analysis/westward-the-course-of-empire-takes-its-way-anthony-burgess-epigraph-source.html
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