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“Evil is tolerable if purged of coarseness.

In my graduate class at Yale, a classmate once said, while studying the war in Sierra Leone, “African violence is different.” In that word, “different,” was a repressed shudder. He meant that hacking people to death with machetes lacked something that might have made it more bearable. A cold-blooded elegance, an efficiency, a remove. I will always remember that student because he illuminated for me the Western idea that turpitude, when committed by a certain kind of person and in a certain kind of way, is worthy of being engaged with.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Virginia Woolf, The Waves (1931)

Francis Ponge on potatoes

To peel a boiled potato of good quality is a rare treat.

Between the cushion of the thumb and the point of the knife held by the other fingers, one seizes – after piercing – one of those lips of rough, thin parchment and pulls it towards one to detach it from the appetizing flesh of the tuber.

This easy operation, when one has succeeded without too many false starts, leaves an impression of indescribable satisfaction.

The rustle the tissues make as they detach themselves is sweet to hear, and the discovery of the edible pulp delightful.

It seems, recognising the perfection of the naked fruit, its difference, its resemblance, its surprise – and the ease of the operation – that one has accomplished something right, long foreseen and sought by nature, that one has had nonetheless the merit of fulfilling.

That is why I shall not say more, at the risk of appearing satisfied with too simple a task. I only needed – in a few effortless phrases – to strip my subject, working strictly around its form: leaving it intact but polished, shining and all ready to endure as well as procure the delights of consumption.

From Le parti pris des choses (1942)

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