The church and the whorehouse (Steinbeck)
January 27th, 2007 | Published in Sexuality, History, Quotes, Religion | 1 Comment
The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.
–John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952), p. 215
August 1st, 2007 at 5:53 pm (#)
Excellent Quote.
I searched for it when I realized something this morning.
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote:
“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.”
I thought one could argue that John Steinbeck says the same thing about churches and brothels. It would have been an interesting argument, but when I re-visited the quote I found he said, “The church and the whorehouse *arrived* in the Far West…”