{"id":2964,"date":"2016-01-23T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/?p=2964"},"modified":"2016-01-16T06:37:18","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T06:37:18","slug":"selections-from-hanya-yanagiharas-a-little-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/2016\/01\/23\/selections-from-hanya-yanagiharas-a-little-life\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Selections from Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been mentioning\u00a0Hanya Yanagihara\u2019s A Little Life <\/em>quite a bit, so I thought I\u2019d provide a, hopefully, spoiler-free taste.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “The world has two kinds of people\u2026 Those who are inclined to believe, and those who aren\u2019t. In my courtroom, we value belief. Belief in all things.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. \u201cHe was practical; he knew that making a career as a lawyer meant sacrifices, either of money or of moralities, but it still troubled him, this forsaking of what he knew to be just. And for what? So he could insure he wouldn\u2019t become that old man, lonely and sick? It seemed the worst kind of selfishness, the worst kind of self-indulgence, to disavow what he knew was right simply because he was frightened, because he was scared of being uncomfortable and miserable.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. \u201cThe axiom of equality states that x<\/em> always equals x<\/em>: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named x<\/em>, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. \u201cIf I were a different kind of person, I might say that this whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. \u201cWasn\u2019t it a miracle to have survived the unsurvivable? Wasn\u2019t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. \u201cBut although he hadn\u2019t been convinced, it was somehow sustaining that someone else had seen him as a worthwhile person, that someone had seen his as a meaningful life.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  7. \u201cAnd he cries and cries, cries for everything he has been, for everything he might have been.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  8. \u201cHe experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  9. \u201cFriendship was witnessing another\u2019s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person\u2019s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  10. \u201cYou won\u2019t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: \u00a0the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are\u2014not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving\u2014and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad\u2014or good\u2014it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u2019ve been mentioning\u00a0Hanya Yanagihara\u2019s A Little Life quite a bit, so I thought I\u2019d provide a, hopefully, spoiler-free taste. “The world has two kinds of people\u2026 Those who are inclined to believe, and those who aren\u2019t. In my courtroom, we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":318,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[544,118,117],"class_list":["post-2964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-10-selections-from-hanya-yanagiharas-a-little-life","tag-chun","tag-cody"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2968,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions\/2968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}