“To Thomas’s eye, Union Square combined the exoticism of The Arabian Nights with the bedrock banality of American commerce, as if a medieval Persian bazaar had been transplanted to the twentieth century and taken over by Wal-Mart.”

— James K. Morrow , book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 2, “Priest” (p. 29)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To Thomas’s eye, Union Square combined the exoticism of The Arabian Nights with the bedrock banality of American commer…" by James K. Morrow?

James K. Morrow 166

(1947-) science fiction author 1947

Related quotes

“Commerce is the mother of the arts, the sciences, the professions, and in this twentieth century has itself become an art, a science, a profession.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

“One of the chief differences between the commerce of the sixteenth century and of the twentieth lies in the wonderful and complicated organizations of the present day. Their magnitude makes even the largest of those of which we have been reading seem insignificant.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

“To realize Medieval India there is no better way than to dive into the eight volumes of the priceless History of India as Told by its Own Historians' a revelation of Indian life as seen through the eyes of the Persian court annalists.”

Stanley Lane-Poole (1854–1931) British orientalist

Lanepoole, quoted in K.S. Lal, The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

“By the time of its disappearance at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, it was no longer plausible to argue that the Soviet Union offered a clear alternative to the ‘right-wing extremism’ of fascism. In fact, it was no longer clear what ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’ might be taken to mean in terms of the major revolutions of the twentieth century.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 6

“It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system; thought and mockery here and now are required to prevent the mechanists from building another.”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

Preface
The Right to Be Happy (1927)
Context: It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system; thought and mockery here and now are required to prevent the mechanists from building another. Without falling into a mystical vitalism that reverences organic nature as sacred, we can at least try rather to serve than to subdue the prancing seas of life. With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do.