William Gaddis - Carpenter's Gothic

— When's the redhead due back.

— I don't know.

He'd settled back on the metal file, watching the bottle come up to lose a level ounce into the dirty glass, reaching suddenly for the smoking cigarette to stamp it out on the yellowed marble. — Go ahead and kill yourself with these things, you don't have to kill us both do you? The boot heels had taken up bump, bumping against the side of the file. — What do you know about the redhead's husband.

— He's behind two months' rent, that's what I know about him.

— You ran a credit check on him didn't you? when they rented your house here?

— I didn't run anything. They gave the agent a bad check for a month's rent they made good a week later and that was it.

— You don't look out for yourself very well do you. You never did… He leaned down to crumple together a handful of loose pages from the folder on the floor. — The IRS down on you, you're probably short of cash, he came on dropping one page and going on to the next, the next, — you always were… and without looking up — I'll give you two thousand dollars for the work you did for Klinger.

— Still the big spenders.

— Cash. It's here isn't it? in this mess here someplace?

— Maybe you're looking at it.

— I'm not looking at it! I'm looking at a lot of, this how you make your living now? writing for the schoolbooks?

— How I made one.

— It's better than your rotten fiction, you should have stayed with it.

— Stayed with it? What do you think that trial in Smackover was all about.

— No I'm serious, McCandless. I'm serious, don't start on your Smackover. Two thousand cash. Look at your shoes, you…

— Think I made it up? like the name on that book there? You think ignorance isn't dead serious? Red dirt, rolling hills, a rail line, trickle of a stream and a town grows up there, great trees meeting overhead down the main street and some civilized person names the place Chemin-couvert. A generation or two of ignorance settles in and you've got Smackover, a hundred years of it and you've got a trial like that one, defending the Bible against the powers of darkness they're doing more to degrade it taking every damned word in it literally than any militant atheist could ever hope to. Foolishness bound in the heart of a child but the rod of correction shall drive it out so they whale the daylights out of their kids with sticks. And they shall take up serpents so they get liquored up and see how many rattlesnakes they can get into a burlap bag, talk about homo habilis in East Africa two million years ago, homo sapiens homo anything they know what a homo is don't they? the men of Sodom telling Lot to bring out his two visiting angels for a little buggery? back in Deuteronomy breaking down the houses of the sodomites? an abomination in Leviticus? these vile affections in Saint Paul burning in their lust to one another? Cutting a little close to the bone here, Lester? Talking about having business with the greatest work ever produced by western man and that's what you…

— I'm talking about the work you did for Klinger. I'm talking about what you found on Klinger's site out there McCandless, not your little grandstand play in Smackover they cleaned that up in Tennessee sixty vears ago, all your ranting about Genesis and evolution the whole…

— Cleared it up? and evolution disappeared from their textbooks for a whole generation going around like they'd all had lobotomies no no no, stupidity's a damned hard habit to break, something right here I just saw it… Papers, clippings, ashes spilled right and left in the table's litter, — damn! The bottle almost went over, — little taste of life in Georgia it's right here someplace…

— Your own mapping, diagrams, field notes all of it, two thous…

— Here, here read this while you're waiting… a pamphlet in ominous black, — the Survival Handbook, it's a little literature from Smackover, tells people like me what to do when people like you are snatched up to meet the Lord in Second Thessalonians for your space age picnic in the clouds while the rest of us are…

— Always get it wrong, don't you. It's First Thessalonians, four, seventeen and I'm not sitting here waiting for a little taste of Georgia, I'm waiting for you to…

— No no here it is, here it is listen. You think that circus in Tennessee straightened things out? Here's a judge in Georgia right now, listen to him. This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of abortions, permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning, and proliferation of crimes of all types what happened to pederasty, penis envy, peeping Toms, you think he's got business with the Bible? those bums in Samuel that pisseth against the wall by the morning light? that gang sitting on the wall in Isaiah drinking their own…

— Two thousand.

— their own piss and eating…

— Cash, two thousand cash… he tapped his breast pocket. — What are you making another of those things for, I just put that one out.

— That's why I'm making another one. You're still a little dense aren't you Lester, it's pretty damned obvious isn't it? You put that one out so I make another one, perfectly logical sequence isn't it? like Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic? All the facts staring you square in the face like they stared at those primates out there proclaiming the truth? choking on Genesis? A very fine line good God, I was wrong wasn't I, it's an abyss, it's the…

— Well what did you want! What did you expect out there, a handful of simple people brought up to believe in the…

— It's not a handful! You call half the country a handful? Almost half the damned people in this country, more than forty percent of them believe man was created eight or ten thousand years ago pretty much as he is today? they believe that? Two versions right there in the first two pages, have your choice. You get the animals first and then man around the sixth day, male and female created he them, or you get man from the dust and then the animals show up lined up like kids at summer camp to get their names and finally Miss America made from a spare rib. God dividing the light from the darkness, the water from the waters and making the firmament why not Pan Koo? why not China? The sleeping giant waking up in the dark smashes the void to make heaven and earth, his breath…

— His breath the winds, his voice the thunder, his sweat the rain and dew, one eye the sun and the other the moon and his fleas men and women I've heard it, I've heard it all McCandless I've heard it from you, you think I came up here to listen to it again? You think you're back in one of these broken down schools where you can rave and rant like this? bully and browbeat everybody in sight because that's what you do. Because you're smarter than anybody else aren't you, like this hero you've got in this rotten novel, this Frank Kinkead… He had the book in the yellow jacket again tossing over its pages five, twenty at a time, — he never picks his nose does he, he's too good for that isn't he. He's supposed to be you isn't he.

— Not supposed to be anybody, what do you think a novel…

— This part here? where he's proceeding on a sea of doubt?

That's pretty bad, proceeding on a sea of doubt that's pretty bad, you know that? And that part where he's trying to give his life a course of inevitability? where he wants to rescue his life from chance and deliver it to destiny? I wouldn't believe that, if I didn't know you I wouldn't believe anybody would talk like that, going around full of outrage because nobody's as smart as he is like those primates you were straightening out in Smackover, you know something? The preponderant IQ in America's around a hundred, you know that? you're going to tell them about Aegyptopithecus sitting around up in the Sahara eating fruit thirty million years ago? you're going to tell them they all come down from Australopithecus ten million years ago when they can't even pronounce Chemin-couvert? He waved off a fresh burst of smoke, — you ever wonder why people pull out on you? That part in here where this Frank Kinkead is telling Slyke he thinks his wife is going to pull out on him that's Irene, isn't it. You changed her name to Gwen but it's really Irene isn't it, it's you sitting there in the New Stanley bar talking about people who live as though life was reversible, about taking responsibility for the consequences of our own acts the same ranting, raving… the book snapped closed. — I'll give you five thousand dollars for the work you did for Klinger.