THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN NATION:
FRAGMENT III—"MY INTELLECTUAL LIFE, PART ONE"
FOOTNOTE 30
The reader's attempt to follow precisely the line of Larsen's thinking and feeling throughout this long and extraordinary section is perhaps more demanding a task than at any other point in all of the Papers. The elegance, however, the passion, certainty, and power with which the author leaps from one peak of desperation, insight, and sorrow to the next, like skipping from one Alp to the next-such thought-writing as this can only inspire awe, and immediately afterward a newly intensified sense of historical sorrow and regret, in any reader swept up by such energies, such perceptions, and such despair. [Editor]
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