Moon Calf: A Novel

p. 265: [Wheels] laughed. “We live in a world of chaos and accident. Politicians think they can tame that chaos. They are fools. Dreamers are the only wise ones. They know that they can take fragments here and there out of the chaos, and gild them with their fancy, until they become shining and beautiful. There is no other beauty. The world itself is hideous. You cannot do anything with it. But you can dream beautiful dreams. You are not a politician. Leave that to the fools. You are a poet. ... You will not go back to the factory. The ironic destinies have other uses for you. Your role will be played up in the sunlight. It is not the intention of the gods to starve you, or maim your body. They want to break your heart, and tear your soul to pieces. And so they will feed you with hope, with success, with power. It is useless for me to tell you not to believe in these things. You will. But from time to time, as the gods afflict you, you will remember what I have said, that beauty exists only in your own dreams. Now forget this, and go off and be happy!”

[Felix] started home. “The ironic destinies!—old Wheels has been reading Thomas Hardy.”

He turned suddenly and went back to the office. “Go off and be happy!—philosophic mush!”

He went in and drew his pay.

“At least I have two weeks more of a clean-shirt existence. That's that much.”

There was in his mind a bitter distaste for the pretended omniscience of old Wheels, and with this was mingled a curious dislike, felt for the first time, of the realistic omniscience of Franz [Vogelsang, the Socialist]. He did not want to go to Central Branch next Friday to share Franz's triumph. That garret Utopia had somehow lost its savour. It was more interesting to live in the real world in which one lost one's job and—yes, by God!—fought to get it back.

“Damn all these people who know everything!” he said.

—

This book does exactly what today's whole memoir-mess-trend doesn't, and for that I love it: it gets off its own ass. Yes, this is one of Floyd Dell's semi-autobiographical novels about growing up and figuring life out, which makes it sound pretty run-of-the-mill. But Dell wrote this in 1921 with a journalist's (read: not a self-congratulator's) sense of truthfulness and purpose.

To date I have not read anything that more completely serves as a guide for self-realization as this was for me. As the book's Felix Fay transitions from self to self to self, always thinking he has Arrived until he sees the next more-informed way of being, he slowly grows into a personal identity that does not merely subscribe, but steps into the reality of society.