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334 Quotes
334
by
Thomas M. Disch1,182 ratings, 3.64 average rating, 121 reviews
334 Quotes
Showing 1-7 of 7
“Early one morning in the late fall, when the whole apartment smelled of rust (the steam had come on during the night), the explanation of what was going and had gone wrong presented itself to her in the plainest terms: “There’s nothing left.� She repeated the phrase to herself like a prayer and with each repetition the circumference of its meaning would expand. The terror of it slowly wound its way through the tangle of her feelings until it had merged with its opposite. “There’s nothing left�: it was cause to rejoice. What had she ever had that it wouldn’t be a liberation to lose? Indeed, too much still clung to her. It would be long before she could say that there was nothing left, absolutely, blessedly nothing at all. Then, the way revelations do, the brilliance faded, leaving her with only the embers of the phrase. Her mind grew furry and she started developing a headache from the smell of the rust.”
― 334
― 334
“For the time being, however, his bent was literary and religious rather than balletic. He loved, and what seventh grader doesn’t, the abstracter foxtrots and more metaphysical twists of a Dostoevsky, a Gide, a Mailer. He longed for the experience of some vivider pain than the mere daily hollowness knotted into his tight young belly, and no weekly stomp-and-holler of group therapy with other jejune eleven-year-olds was going to get him his stripes in the major leagues of suffering, crime, and resurrection. Only a bona-fide crime would do that, and of all the crimes available murder certainly carried the most prestige, as no less an authority than Loretta Couplard was ready to attest, Loretta Couplard being not only the director and co-owner of the Lowen School but the author, as well, of two nationally televised scripts, both about famous murders of the 20th Century. They’d even done a unit in social studies on the topic: A History of Crime in Urban America.
The first of Loretta’s murders was a comedy involving Pauline Campbell, R.N., of Ann Arbor, Michigan, circa 1951, whose skull had been smashed by three drunken teenagers. They had meant to knock her unconscious so they could screw her, which was 1951 in a nutshell. The eighteen-year-olds, Bill Morey and Max Pell, got life; Dave Royal (Loretta’s hero) was a year younger and got off with twenty-two years.
Her second murder was tragic in tone and consequently inspired more respect, though not among the critics, unfortunately. Possibly because her heroine, also a Pauline (Pauline Wichura), though more interesting and complicated had also been more famous in her own day and ever since. Which made the competition, one best-selling novel and a serious film biography, considerably stiffen Miss Wichura had been a welfare worker in Atlanta, Georgia, very much into environment and the population problem, this being the immediate pre-Regents period when anyone and everyone was legitimately starting to fret. Pauline decided to do something, viz., reduce the population herself and in the fairest way possible. So whenever any of the families she visited produced one child above the three she’d fixed, rather generously, as the upward limit, she found some unobtrusive way of thinning that family back to the preferred maximal size. Between 1989 and 1993 Pauline’s journals (Random House, 1994) record twenty-six murders, plus an additional fourteen failed attempts. In addition she had the highest welfare department record in the U.S. for abortions and sterilizations among the families whom she advised.
“Which proves, I think,� Little Mister Kissy Lips had explained one day after school to his friend Jack, “that a murder doesn’t have to be of someone famous to be a form of idealism.�
But of course idealism was only half the story: the other half was curiosity. And beyond idealism and curiosity there was probably even another half, the basic childhood need to grow up and kill someone.”
― 334
The first of Loretta’s murders was a comedy involving Pauline Campbell, R.N., of Ann Arbor, Michigan, circa 1951, whose skull had been smashed by three drunken teenagers. They had meant to knock her unconscious so they could screw her, which was 1951 in a nutshell. The eighteen-year-olds, Bill Morey and Max Pell, got life; Dave Royal (Loretta’s hero) was a year younger and got off with twenty-two years.
Her second murder was tragic in tone and consequently inspired more respect, though not among the critics, unfortunately. Possibly because her heroine, also a Pauline (Pauline Wichura), though more interesting and complicated had also been more famous in her own day and ever since. Which made the competition, one best-selling novel and a serious film biography, considerably stiffen Miss Wichura had been a welfare worker in Atlanta, Georgia, very much into environment and the population problem, this being the immediate pre-Regents period when anyone and everyone was legitimately starting to fret. Pauline decided to do something, viz., reduce the population herself and in the fairest way possible. So whenever any of the families she visited produced one child above the three she’d fixed, rather generously, as the upward limit, she found some unobtrusive way of thinning that family back to the preferred maximal size. Between 1989 and 1993 Pauline’s journals (Random House, 1994) record twenty-six murders, plus an additional fourteen failed attempts. In addition she had the highest welfare department record in the U.S. for abortions and sterilizations among the families whom she advised.
“Which proves, I think,� Little Mister Kissy Lips had explained one day after school to his friend Jack, “that a murder doesn’t have to be of someone famous to be a form of idealism.�
But of course idealism was only half the story: the other half was curiosity. And beyond idealism and curiosity there was probably even another half, the basic childhood need to grow up and kill someone.”
― 334
“Glory, isn’t it”—she caught her breath, waved her hand in front of her face, decoratively—“exciting!�
Alexa asked what.
“The bombing.�
“BdzԲ?�
“Oh, you haven’t heard. They’re bombing New York. They showed it on teevee, where it landed. These steps!� She collapsed beside Alexa with a great huff. The smell that had seemed so appetizing outside Big San Juan’s had lost its savor. “But they couldn’t show”—she waved her hand and it was still, Alexa had to admit, a lovely and a graceful hand—“the actual airplane itself. Because of the fog, you know.�
“Who’s bombing New York?�
“The radicals, I suppose. It’s some kind of protest. Against something.�
Lottie Hanson watched her breasts lift and fall. The importance of the news she bore made her feel pleased with herself. She waited for the next question all aglow.
But Alexa had begun calculating with no more input than she had already. The notion had seemed, from Lottie’s first words, inevitable. The city cried out to be bombed. The amazing thing was that no one had ever thought to do it before.
When she did at last ask Lottie a question, it came from an unexpected direction. “Are you afraid?�
“No, not a bit. It’s funny, because usually, you know, I’m just a bundle of nerves. Are you afraid?�
“No. Just the opposite. I feel…� She had to stop and think what it was that she did feel.”
― 334
Alexa asked what.
“The bombing.�
“BdzԲ?�
“Oh, you haven’t heard. They’re bombing New York. They showed it on teevee, where it landed. These steps!� She collapsed beside Alexa with a great huff. The smell that had seemed so appetizing outside Big San Juan’s had lost its savor. “But they couldn’t show”—she waved her hand and it was still, Alexa had to admit, a lovely and a graceful hand—“the actual airplane itself. Because of the fog, you know.�
“Who’s bombing New York?�
“The radicals, I suppose. It’s some kind of protest. Against something.�
Lottie Hanson watched her breasts lift and fall. The importance of the news she bore made her feel pleased with herself. She waited for the next question all aglow.
But Alexa had begun calculating with no more input than she had already. The notion had seemed, from Lottie’s first words, inevitable. The city cried out to be bombed. The amazing thing was that no one had ever thought to do it before.
When she did at last ask Lottie a question, it came from an unexpected direction. “Are you afraid?�
“No, not a bit. It’s funny, because usually, you know, I’m just a bundle of nerves. Are you afraid?�
“No. Just the opposite. I feel…� She had to stop and think what it was that she did feel.”
― 334
“No,� she said peevishly (it was that half hour), “I’m Boz, and she’s Milly.�
“Sometimes,� McGonagall said, letting go, “the best solution is divorce. I want you both to understand that if that should be my opinion in your case, I won’t hesitate to say so. If you’re annoyed that I kept you waiting so long, tant pis, since it was for a good reason. It rids us of our company manners from the start. And what is the first thing you say when you come in here? That your husband is a woman! How did it make you feel, Boz, to know that Milly would like to cut off your balls and wear them herself?�
Boz shrugged, long-suffering, ever-likable. “I thought it was funny.�
“Ha,� laughed McGonagall, “that’s what you thought. But what did you feel? Did you want to strike her? Were you afraid? Or secretly pleased?�
“That’s it in a nutshell.”
― 334
“Sometimes,� McGonagall said, letting go, “the best solution is divorce. I want you both to understand that if that should be my opinion in your case, I won’t hesitate to say so. If you’re annoyed that I kept you waiting so long, tant pis, since it was for a good reason. It rids us of our company manners from the start. And what is the first thing you say when you come in here? That your husband is a woman! How did it make you feel, Boz, to know that Milly would like to cut off your balls and wear them herself?�
Boz shrugged, long-suffering, ever-likable. “I thought it was funny.�
“Ha,� laughed McGonagall, “that’s what you thought. But what did you feel? Did you want to strike her? Were you afraid? Or secretly pleased?�
“That’s it in a nutshell.”
― 334
“The apple pie colophon, signaling the end of the war for that Wednesday morning, splattered and the decibels were boosted for the April Ford commercial, “Come and Get Me, Cop.�
Come and get me, Cop,
Cause I’m not gonna stop
At your red light.
It was a happy little song, but how could he feel happy when he knew that Milly was probably watching it too and enjoying it in a faculty lounge somewhere, never even giving a thought for Boz, or where he was, or how he felt. Milly studied all the commercials and could play them back to you verbatim, every tremor and inflection just so. And not a milligram of her own punch. Creative? As a parrot.
Now, what if he were to tell her that? What if he told her that she would never be anything more than a second-string Grade-Z hygiene demonstrator for the Board of Education. Cruel? Boz was supposed to be cruel?
He shook his head, flip flop of auburn. “Baby, you don’t know what cruel is.�
Mickey switched off the teevee. “Oh, if you think this was something today you should have seen them yesterday. They were in this school. Parkistanis, I think. Yeah. You should have seen it. That was cruel. They wiped them out.�
“Who did?�
“Company A.� Mickey came to attention and saluted the air. Kids his age (six) always wanted to be guerillas or firemen. At ten it was pop singers. At fourteen, if they were bright (and somehow all the Hansons were bright), they wanted to write. Boz still had a whole scrapbook of the advertisements he’d written in high school. And then, at twenty �?
Don’t think about it.”
― 334
Come and get me, Cop,
Cause I’m not gonna stop
At your red light.
It was a happy little song, but how could he feel happy when he knew that Milly was probably watching it too and enjoying it in a faculty lounge somewhere, never even giving a thought for Boz, or where he was, or how he felt. Milly studied all the commercials and could play them back to you verbatim, every tremor and inflection just so. And not a milligram of her own punch. Creative? As a parrot.
Now, what if he were to tell her that? What if he told her that she would never be anything more than a second-string Grade-Z hygiene demonstrator for the Board of Education. Cruel? Boz was supposed to be cruel?
He shook his head, flip flop of auburn. “Baby, you don’t know what cruel is.�
Mickey switched off the teevee. “Oh, if you think this was something today you should have seen them yesterday. They were in this school. Parkistanis, I think. Yeah. You should have seen it. That was cruel. They wiped them out.�
“Who did?�
“Company A.� Mickey came to attention and saluted the air. Kids his age (six) always wanted to be guerillas or firemen. At ten it was pop singers. At fourteen, if they were bright (and somehow all the Hansons were bright), they wanted to write. Boz still had a whole scrapbook of the advertisements he’d written in high school. And then, at twenty �?
Don’t think about it.”
― 334
