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Quote by Jonathan Raban

“Sociology and anthropology are not disciplines which take easily to situations where people are able to live out their fantasies, not just in the symbolic action of ritual, but in the concrete theater of society at large.”

Quote by Jonathan Raban

Work

Soft City: Picador Classic

This book is a novel that delves into the complexities of urban environments and their influence on the lives of individuals. Set in a modern cityscape, the narrative examines the psychological and social dynamics at play within urban settings. more

Author

Jonathan Raban
Jonathan Raban

Jonathan Raban, born on June 14, 1942, is a renowned travel writer from the United Kingdom. His works are known for their unique perspective and profound insights into travel experiences, covering a wide range of regions from Africa to the Americas. Raban's writing style often blends travel literature, history, and philosophy, giving his works a distinct literary value. more

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“Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, then, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.”

“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fiber of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardily.”

“Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey's fits and starts, rehearses life's own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things.”