Orts #903

The following sentences are taken from William F. Buckley, Jr.'s The Lexicon, a book of words (1996)
 

In an idle moment during a holiday, I searched the waveband of a portable radio in quest of something to listen to. None of the twenty or so options relayed classical music. It required only a little Cartesian Geländesprung to alight at the conclusion that it is the responsibility of the government to maintain monuments that are man-made, as well as those given us by nature.

The cavil that Beethoven doesn't need looking after since his records sell by the trainload isn't at all satisfying to someone spelunking through radio channels in search of Beethoven.

In his late crazy days, as distinguished from his early crazy days, Mao Tse-tung decided that Mozart and Beethoven were great public enemies of the revolution and sought to extirpate them and others from the inventory of music the Chinese were permitted to listen to.

Rosalyn Tureck tells me that the note I sent her, likening Bach's E-minor Partita to King Lear was right on, that she had played the partita a thousand times, but always treated it with awe because she could not know what it would say to her this time around, even as Lear cannot be tuned by stroboscope.

Etiquette is the first value only of the society that has no values, the effete society. An occasional disregard for the niceties may bring us face to face with certain facts from which man labors to shield himself.

Wearily he began to undress, first removing the beard in front of the mirror and staring fondly at his repristinated face.

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from the Historical Context Department:
"What Happens When a Bad-Tempered, Distractible Doofus Runs an Empire?"
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-happens-when-a-bad-tempered-distractible-doofus-runs-an-empire