Dog-eared 11

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.

2666 (again)

Every life, Epifanio said that night to Lalo Cura, no matter how happy it is, ends in pain and suffering. That depends, said Lalo Cura. Depends on what, champ? On lots of things, said Lalo Cura. Say you’re shot in the back of the head, for example, and you don’t hear the motherfucker come up behind you, then you’re off to the next world, no pain, no suffering. Goddamn kid, said Epifanio. Have you ever been shot in the back of the head?

From Roberto Bolano’s 2666 (page 511).

Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (three times)

“On purpose,” J.D. says, balancing his cigar on his heavy lower lip. “You don’t go to the client. You make the client come to you. That way the cap’s in his hand. Client comes a complex series of long ways to see you, has a tough journey, encounters bad roads and no maps and detours: client’s convinced already, en route, that your services have value, for him to be wandering all over hell’s half acre like this just to find you.” J.D. beams grimly. Mark notes that DeHaven can silently lip-sync his father’s whole speech. Plus his summation:

“A-very-wise-guru-at-the-top-of-a-tough-to-climb-mountain strategem,” J.D. says. “It’s no coincidence it’s the gurus on mountains who’re wise. You get to the top: you’re already theirs.”

From David Foster Wallace’s “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way” in Girl With Curious Hair (page 307).

It makes Nechtr feel special, true. But from special it’s not very far to Alone.

From David Foster Wallace’s “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way” in Girl With Curious Hair (page 308).

[In making an absurd argument that Hawaii Five-O is pure entertainment free of politics] “Especially in reruns, syndication, that you’ve seen before,” Sternberg says, into it, feeling, feeling disembodied, other, flaccid. “Incredibly comforting. You know just how the universe is going to be for the next hour. Totally secure. Detached but connected. A womb with a view.”

From David Foster Wallace’s “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way” in Girl With Curious Hair (page 317).

Lost in the Funhouse (two more times)

[Fat May is the large, grotesque mechanical lady at the entrance to the funhouse who projects recorded “laughs” through a loudspeaker]

Money spent, the three paused at Peter’s insistence beside Fat May to watch the girls get their skirts blown up. The object was to tease Magda, who said: “I swear, Peter M—, you’ve got a one-track mind! Amby and me aren’t interested in such things.” In the tumbling-barrel, too, just inside the Devil’s mouth entrance to the funhouse, the girls were upended and their boyfriends and others could see up their dresses if they cared to. Which was the whole point, Ambrose realized. Of the entire funhouse! If you looked around, you noticed that almost all the people on the boardwalk were paired off into Couples except the small children; in a way, that was the whole point of Ocean City! If you had X-ray eyes and could see everything going on at that instant under the boardwalk and in all the hotel rooms and cars and alleyways, you’d realize that all that normally showed, like restaurants and dance halls and clothing and test-your-strength machines, was merely preparation and intermission. Fat May screamed.

From John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse” from Lost in the Funhouse.

The word fuck suggests suction and/or and/or flatulence. Mother and father; grandmothers and grandfathers on both sides; great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers on four sides, et cetera. Count a generation as thirty years: in approximately the year when Lord Baltimore was granted charter to the province of Maryland by Charles I, five hundred twelve women—English, Welsh, Barvarian, Swiss—of every class and character, received into themselves the penises the intromittent organs of five hundred twelve men, ditto, in every circumstance and posture, to conceive the five hundred twelve ancestors and the two hundred fifty-six ancestors of the et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera of the author, of the narrator, of this story, Lost in the Funhouse. In alleyways, ditches, canopy beds, pinewoods, bridal suites, ship’s cabins, coach-and-fours, coaches-and-four, sultry toolsheds; on the cold sand under boardwalks, littered with El Producto cigar butts, treasured with Lucky Strike cigarette stubs, Coca-Cola caps, gritty turds, cardboard lollipop sticks, matchbook covers warning that A Slip of the Lip Can Sink a Ship. The shluppish whisper, continuous as seawash round the globe, tidelike falls and rises with the circuit of dawn and dusk.

From John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse” from Lost in the Funhouse.