Sunday, September 30, 2007

From Nakedness by John Updike

"There have been two revolutions in the last ten years," he told her. "One, women learned to say 'fuck.' Two, the oppressed learned to despise their sympathizers."

...

The nudists, paradoxically, brought more clothing to the beach than the bourgeoisie; they distinguished themselves, walking up the beach to the point, by being dressed head to toe, in denim and felt, as if they had strolled straight from the urban core of the counterculture. Now, as the young cop moved among them like a sorrowing angel, they bent and huddled in the obsequieous poses of redressing.

"My God," Joan said, "it's Masaccio's Expulsion from Paradise." And Richard felt her heart in the fatty casing of her body plump up, pleased with the link, satisfied to have demonstrated once again to herself the relevance of a humanistic education to modern experience.