Here he used to walk with his father and speak of the galaxies and of the expanding universe and take pleasure in the insignificance of man in the great lonely universe. His father would recite “Dover Beach,” setting his jaw askew and wagging’ his head like F.D.R.: for the world which seems To lie before…
Sutter wrote: A w.d. and n. white male, circa 49. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth: neg. (upper dentures). Skin: 12 cm. contusion rt. occipital region Pleura: Neg. Lungs: Neg. Pericardium: 10 cc. pink frothy fluid Heart: infarcted anterior wall right ventricle; coronary artery: moderate narrowing, occasional plaque; recent occlusion anterior descending branch, right c.a. Abdomen: neg.…
Jamie told him that Sutter drove an Edsel to remind him of the debacle of the Ford Motor Company and to commemorate the last victory of the American people over marketing research and opinion polls. The engineer wasn’t sure he liked the sound of this. It had the sound of a quixotic type who admires…
The happiness and serenity of the South disconcerted him. He had felt good in the North because everyone else felt so bad. True, there was a happiness in the North. That is to say, nearly everyone would have denied that he was unhappy. And certainly the North was victorious. It had never lost a war.…
Nights were best. Then as the thick singing darkness settled about the little caboose which shed its cheerful square of light on the dark soil of old Carolina, they might debark and, with the pleasantest sense of stepping down from the zone of the possible to the zone of the realized, stroll to a service…
He began to look forward to meeting Mort Prince. Some years ago he had read two of his novels and remembered them perfectly—he could remember perfectly every detail of a book he had read ten years ago or a conversation with his father fifteen years ago; it was the day before yesterday that gave him…
Man is certainly stark mad. He can’t make a worm, but he makes gods by the dozens. . . . “We can’t go back there,” she said. Her pale face loomed unsteadily in the darkness. He was thinking about the reciprocal ratio of love: was it ever so with the love of women that they…
Why is it that bad news is not so bad and good news not so good and what with the bad news being good, aye that is what makes her well and me sick? . . . Instead he was thinking of wars and death at home. On the days of bad news there was…
I told her (I always remember the remote past first). ‘It was an orange-colored cotton twill sort of material.’ ‘That was my piqué,’ says she as normally as you please.” For some reason he flushed and fell silent. . . . Jamie—who, he was told, had a severe and atypical mononucleosis—saw him as a fellow…
He sized them up as Yankee sort of Southerners, the cheerful, prosperous go-getters one comes across in the upper South, in Knoxville maybe, or Bristol. “Where’re you from,” cried Mrs. Vaught in a mock-accusatory tone he recognized and knew how to respond to. “Ithaca,” he said, smiling. “Over in the Delta.” He felt himself molt.…
