@@@@@ Hearn, cupping his chin in his handYou
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Hearn, cupping his chin in his handYou know when nothing else is left I'm going to become a fairy, not a goddam little nance, you understand, but a nice upright pillar of the community, live on green lawnsNever a dull moment, man or woman, it's all the same to you, exciting
Jansen's head lollsNone of your machine-made copulations for meYou know the trouble with Americans is they don't know how to screw, there's no art in our lives, every intellectual has a Babbitt in the closetOh, I like that one, I like itCan it for me, will you, Jansen?
We're all neurotic
For a little while it is all quite gloriousThey are wise and aware and sick and the world outside is corrupt and they are the only ones who know itWeltschmertzen, mahogany melancholies, and Weltanschauungen are the only currency
But it does not always workI'm a phony, Hearn says, and there are times when it goes beyond the flippancy, the easy depression, the almost gratifying self-disgustSometimes there are things which can be done about it
He broods about this through the summer, has a fight with his father
I'll tell you, Robert, I don't know where you picked up all this union idea guff, but if you think they ain't a bunch of gangsters, if you think my men weren't better off depending on me, when Jesus Christ I've helped them out of many a scrape, and Christmas bonuses, Why don't you stay out of this, you don't know what the hell you're talking about
I resent that, but you never could understand what paternalism is
Maybe I don't being as it's a big word, but it seems to me it's easy enough to bite the hand that feeds ya
Well, you don't have to worry about that any more
But after a further series of supplications and quarrels, he goes back to school early, gets a job washing dishes in the Georgian, and keeps it once classes have startedThere are movements toward reconciliation; Ina comes out to Boston for the first time in three years, and a grudged truce is achievedHe writes home from time to time, but he will not take any money, and junior year is a grind of selling college subscriptions and pressing and laundering contracts to freshmen, odd jobs on weekends, and waiting on tables in the house as a substitute for dishwashingHe likes none of it particularly, but there are new processes discovered, new sources of strengthHe never really debates the idea of taking money from his parents any longer
And he feels himself growing older through the year, tougher, wonders at it and picks up no answers