In this fascinating interview Carlin sketches a delightfully alienated childhood, in which his mother’s insistence on not denigrating her estranged husband seems to have ameliorated his plight as a fatherless boy. The discussion of his boyhood as a bucolic spate of lonely gratification and learning seems to have been ideal for developing his unique powers of insight and observation.
One may forgive his atheism, as he came of age in a time when the weight of hypocrisy was centered in the Judeo-Christian worldview, in contrast to our own age when Man’s moral duplicity is most deeply imbedded in its secular institutions.
The Pale Usher
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