[...] He couldn't speak to Amy of the solitary death in store for her. There was not a cloud in the arid sky today, and there was no shadow of death on Amy. [...]
[...] He felt polluted, but he read about purity. He had reached a bad stage of limited selfhood, disaffection, unwillingness to be; he was sick; he wanted out. Then he read this dazzling book. It rushed over him. HE thought he would drown. But he didn't drown; he floated.
[...] He was, however, attracted by rational analysis. The emotional struggles of mankind were never resolved. The same things were done over and over, with passion, with passionate stupidity, insectlike, the same emotional struggles repeated in daily reality - urge, drive, desire, self-preservatio…
[...] Relatives were sympathetic, but this sympathy of aunts and cousins Max sensed to be self-congratulatory. He coldly rejected it, looking straight before him and lengthening his straight mouth. When people spoke sympathetically to him about his daughter, he seemed to be considering the best way…
Books in Chicago were obtainable. The public library in the twenties had many storefront branches along the car lines. Summers, under flipping guttapercha fan blades, boys and girls read in the hard chairs. Crimson trolley cars swayed, cowbellied, on the rails. The country went broke in 1929. On th…
