Drunk, Jane Spoke As Though

Every Generation Loses The Messiah It Has Failed To Deserve.

Novelist Time Is Reptile Time; Novelists Tend To Be Ruminant And Brooding, Nursers Of Ancient Grievances, Second-guessers, Tuesday Afternoon Quarterbacks, Retrospectators, Endlessly, Like Slumping Hitters, Studying The Film Of Their Old Whiffs.

I Found One Remaining Box Of Comics Which I Had Saved. When I Opened It Up And That Smell Came Pouring Out, That Old Paper Smell, I Was Struck By A Rush Of Memories, A Sense Of My Childhood Self That Seemed To Be Contained In There.

Nothing That Had Ever Happened To Him, Not The Shooting Of Oyster, Or The Piteous Muttering Expiration Of John Wesley Shannenhouse, Or The Death Of His Father, Or Internment Of His Mother And Grandfather, Not Even The Drowning Of His Beloved Brother, Had Ever Broken His Heart Quite As Terribly As The Realization, When He Was Halfway To The Rimed Zinc Hatch Of The German Station, That He Was Hauling A Corpse Behind Him

Man Makes Plans . . . And God Laughs.