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—Like that incredible book you published, what was it? Valentine went on, looking over the array on the table. —“Soul-searching” the reviewers called it. By some poor fellow who joined a notorious political group, behaved treasonably? And after satisfying that peculiar accumulation of guilt which he called his conscience by betraying everyone in sight, joined a respectable remnant of the Protestant church and settled down to pour out his . . .
—It’s already sold half a million, Brown said patiently. —That’s what people want now, soul-searching.
—Soul-searching! Valentine repeated. —People like that haven’t a soul to search. You might say they’re searching for one. The only ones they seem to find are in some maudlin confessional with the great glob of people they really consider far less intelligent than themselves, they call that humility. Stupid people in whom they pretend to find some beautiful quality these people know nothing about. That’s called charity. No, he said and shrugged impatiently, turning with his hands clasped behind him. —These people who hop about from one faith to another have no more to confess than that they have no faith in themselves.
The sun was high enough now to fill the dining room with its light, over the dark dining table, and the low table under the window, and warm on the back of his neck when he woke moving nothing but his eyelids, opened upon the bowl of cold oatmeal before him, and nothing there else but a spoon. He did stare at the bowl and the spoon for a moment, or a minute, in that waking suspension of time when co-ordination is impossible, when every fragment of reality intrudes on its own terms, separately, clattering in and the mind tries to grasp each one as it passes, sensing that these things could be understood one by one and unrelated, if the stream could be stopped before it grows into a torrent, and the mind is engulfed in the totality of consciousness. [...] Then perfect diamonds, and so across that brink of unbearable loneliness, and fully awake, startled only with the quiet, and the sunlight bearing flecks of silent motion. If there had been a dream, it was gone back where it came from, to refurbish its props, to be recast probably, possibly rewritten, given a new twist to put it across, make it memorable to the audience and acceptable to the censor, all that, but the same old director, same producer, waiting to dissemble the same obscenities before the same captive audience, waiting, again, the first curtain of sleep. [...]
ugh
Just now this present was being cajoled toward a disfigurated future by a man with a woman tattooed on his left arm. She reposed there so long as he talked or listened; but when he interrupted to raise his glass, she was strangled. Though she had been suffering this treatment for many years, she bore it with the same surprise contorting her blue face whenever it was repeated; and when it was done, she returned to the same pose of unsuspecting tranquillity. (True, she was not entirely innocent: turned at another angle, and a portion of her covered up, she was capable of a pose which none who did not know her might have suspected from her placid countenance.) —The Resurrectionists! said he; and she was strangled.
wow. had to re-read this
—He came to see me.
—So I gather. When, last night?
—Otto, that isn’t nice, she said, sobered, disappointed.
—I’m sorry. Otto, suddenly, could not afford to be left so: he had withdrawn as a woman withdraws, to be followed. There was no pursuit in Esme’s eyes, as she turned them from him. —Esme, I’m sorry.
brutal
He sat staring at her face turned half from him. Then he reached up and turned it to him with one hand. Esme looked frightened. —Why are you beautiful? he demanded. Her eyes opened more widely, and she tried to lower her face. —Why are you? he repeated, looking at her. She did pull her chin back, and lower her face, silent. —Because you . . . I look at your face, this flesh and bone so many inches high and wide, and the nose sticking out and the . . . the punctures of nostrils, and your lips and I . . . and those two things that are eyes, and I . . . why should that be beautiful, anyhow. What is it? . . . and Otto’s voice was suddenly constricted, —What is beauty . . . He cleared his throat, —that your face should be beautiful? . . .
good question
Otto approached with his head down, as though it were weighed so by the rampage going on inside, and his features declined to the edges of his face, the look of one seeking something, or perhaps someone, a person he could talk this over with, someone who had suffered good intentions put to bad use by others, and would understand (by which Otto, talking to himself, meant sympathize); someone sensitive (he meant weak) enough to appreciate, and experienced (he meant bitter) enough to justify his dilemma. Stanley appeared in the interior rampage, bowed, understanding, sensitive, experienced: he raised his eyes and Stanley appeared, talking with (untrustworthy) Max and (odious) Anselm.
Historians, anxious to rescue some semblance of a system from the chaos of the past, point out that since the dawn of civilization, the center of civilization has moved westward: from Polycrates’ Asian island and Solon’s Athens to Constantine’s Roman Empire nine centuries later, on to Charlemagne’s Frankish labyrinth, ever onward to Canute the Dane at the millennium, across the Channel to the fourteenth-century England of Edward III it came, gathered its breath there (while word of renascence breathed behind in Italy) for three centuries, readying for the leap across the sea to shores of a New World, where early settlers (having thrown off that yoke of tyrannical ignorance, religious persecution) promoted a culture founded in pure reason, and introduced their civilized art to the Indians, forging wampum of porcelain and bone. They prospered. Hard work was the only expression of gratitude their deity exacted and money might be expected to accrue as testimonial; though Pennsylvania decreed the pillory, with the ears nailed to it and cut off, and a complement of thirty-nine lashes and a fine, these dedicated beings did not quail. But like so many of the mystic contrivances devised by priesthoods which slip, slide, and perish in lay hands, this too became a cottage industry: tradesmen, barbers, and barkeeps issued money, keeping up as best they could with the thousand different banks who were doing the same thing. Before the war which was fought to preserve the Union, a third of the paper money in circulation was counterfeit, and another third the issue of what were generously termed “irresponsible” banks. Meanwhile inspectors went from one bank to another, following the security bullion which was obligingly moved from the bank they had just inspected to the one where they next arrived; and the importunate public, demanding the same assurance, was satisfied with boxes rattling broken glass. Merchants kept “counterfeit detectors” under their counters, and every bill offered them in payment was checked against this list of all counterfeits in circulation, and notes rendered worthless by the disappearance of the evanescent banks which had issued them.
lol
—He’s right, for Christ sake, everybody suffers, the crime is in this world you suffer and it doesn’t mean a God-damned thing, it doesn’t fit anywhere. You can stand any suffering if it means something, Anselm went on rapidly, but still as though suppressing some specific thing which filled his mind. —The only time suffering’s unbearable is when it’s meaningless, he finished, muttering.
At that Otto raised an eyebrow and licked his lip, preparing to quote the lines with which Gordon reduced Priscilla toward the close of Act II, the scene in the doorway of the summer cottage which glittered before him even now, as though in production. GORDON: Suffering, my dear Priscilla, is a petty luxury of mediocre people. You will find happiness a far more noble, and infinitely more refined . . .
—You remember what Montherlant has to say, Max interrupted them. —Le bonheur est un état bien plus noble et bien plus raffiné que la souffrance . . . His French was unprofessional and surprisingly clear. Otto muttered impatiently at being interrupted the moment he had started to speak, and turned to ask Stanley if he had ever read any of Vainiger, as Max finished, —le petit luxe des personnes de médiocre qualité.
oh my god
The first thing she saw when she entered her apartment was the unnatural radiance of the sunlamp. Agnes Deigh paused there, still holding her keys, as though to appreciate fully the affliction before her, worse second by second as she hesitated, considering what might have happened had she not arrived; even perhaps that there was still time for her to leave, quietly as she had come, back into the transfigurating weather: but before she was able to contain this possibility sufficient to examine it, and find there one of those mortal shocks with which life rarely presents us opportunity to abandon the bonds of circumstances woven with such care, and start off upon any of a thousand alternative courses among which, like the needle in the haystack, lies the real one: habit betrays us, as it betrayed Agnes Deigh. She put a hand on the Swede’s shoulder, and made a sound.
She had, indeed, got a stern look on her face which none of them had ever seen; but as quick as it had come, it softened to one of weary disappointment. Then she said thoughtfully, not looking at anyone, —The people who demand pity of you hate you afterward for giving it. They always hate you afterward. She watched him plod across the room as though in deep snow.