“This little band of bohemians, as grimly single-minded as
any evangelical sect, illustrate, by the very ferocity with which they disavow
American attitudes, one of the most American of attributes, the inability to
believe that time is real. . . Society, it would seem, is a flimsy structure,
beneath contempt, designed by and for all the other people, and experience is
nothing more than sensation – so many sensations, added up like arithmetic,
give one the rich, full life.” James Baldwin, "A Question of Identity," from Notes of a Native Son, 1955
