“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(11:19.) Such communities have few poets, few artists, and fewer mediums. Tunkhannock is actually an idealized version of that kind of community. In those terms (underlined) it is for Loren a step up from, say, Sayre, whose history is richer even in “lower class” origins. Sayre, however, generally now, represented the poorer man’s version of that American ideal, and it was from there that many of your beliefs and those of your brothers had their origins.

A man showed himself a man, say, by getting paid every Friday night, coming home after a stop at the pub with coins jingling in his pocket, to give his wife the house money for the week. I do not want to hurt your feelings—but your particular beliefs about a male and money are in their way quite parochial, and you must understand that as far as money is concerned, also, those beliefs have little moral value—moral value.

It is as ridiculous to prove your worth by working in a conventional sense as it is to prove your worth by not working in a conventional sense. Americans have had a fine and often understandable disdain for what was thought of as the European gentleman, or even the literary gentleman, or the man who somehow or other did not have to “rub elbows with the masses.”

The man of letters is not understood either, and you feel that your brothers cannot understand what you do, since their minds seem relatively closed —relatively closed—to the books themselves, which would automatically offer an explanation.

(Pause.) Most men’s abilities are prosaic enough and conventional enough so that their value can be ascertained—or worked out by labor unions (amused). If all a man can do to “prove his value” is to put a bolt in a car, or drive a truck, or even teach a class, then he is very careful that that contribution be noticed, and that a definite value be given it. You cannot estimate the value of ideas or of creativity in that fashion.

Again—not to overemphasize this—at such times a part of you thinks —or you think partly—that if you were “a simple working man” life would be easier. Do you follow the connections clearly?

Though men could compete for a livelihood, wealth itself was and still is highly suspect. Even a wealthy man, in the light of those beliefs, dabbles in art —dabbles—justifying any love of art as a good investment.