Dog-eared 10

I’ve decided to copy my wife's “dog-eared” feature. These posts will contain quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Lost in the Funhouse

The ticket-woman, witchlike, mortifying him when inadvertently he gave her his name-coin instead of the half-dollar, then unkindly calling Magda’s attention to the birthmark on his temple: “Watch out for him, girlie, he’s a marked man!” She wasn’t even cruel, he understood, only vulgar and insensitive. Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she’d see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her . . . and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being.

From Lost in the Funhouse, by John Barth, 1968.