Gilbert Sorrentino - The Abyss of Human Illusion

— VIII —

… store-brand English muffin … The store, A&P; the brand, Jane Parker.

… peanut butter … The peanut butter is also the A&P’s own brand. Ann Page.

… a cigarette … He smokes Camel Lights and Marlboro Lights.

… the old story of the death camp survivor … The story: after being liberated from Auschwitz, a Jew tells another Jew that he’s going to leave soon for Brazil or Chile or Laos or Pakistan — someplace that is not in Europe. The other Jew says, “It’s so far!”, to which the first Jew replies, “Far from what?”

— IX —

… the sliding glass door … This suggests, but does not, certainly, prove, that the mise-en-scène is California.

… it presented a message … E.g., “Hello! You’ve been selected for a Caribbean vacation!”

… he’d had a friend … This unexpected event occurred a month or so after the friend had published his first book of poems. There is probably no significance to this, although another “friend” of the poet said that perhaps he’s read his own work.

— X—

… loves a girl, who, as it turns out … The reader may be reminded of the last lines of Swann’s Way (Moncrieff-Kilmartin translation): “to think that I’ve wasted years of my life, that I’ve longed to die, that I’ve experienced my greatest love, for a woman who didn’t appeal to me, who wasn’t even my type!” It should be noted, however, that Proust tells us that Swann said this to himself in a period of his “intermittent caddishness.”

… anything you can dream up … You might wish to make on the fly leaves of this book some of the things you can dream up, if you wish; the reader is the ruler.

… relentlessly invents its gods … It is, of course, distressingly clear that many societies believe that their gods have not been invented but have permitted themselves to be revealed. There were also many extinct societies that believed in revealed gods. The latter are also extinct, despite the occasional romantic attempt to pretend otherwise.

… “in mysterious ways”… “God works in mysterious ways” is one of the supreme bromides of our age, and this is the age of bromides, many of them disguised as hardheaded observations of life.

— XI —

… the Angelus is heard … The morning Angelus prayer in the Roman Catholic church is announced by the ringing of church bells at 6:00 a.m. In this case, the bells are ringing in the belfry of the Visitation Academy, a school for Catholic girls, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

… in Dr. Denton pajamas … One-piece children’s pajamas, often of cotton flannel, their distinguishing feature is the presence of foot coverings, so that the wearer has, so to speak, built-in “slippers” on the garment. They were especially popular in the thirties and forties.

— XII —

… smoking one cigarette after another … In this particular case, Philip Morris cigarettes, the package of which was designed to look like a cured tobacco leaf.

… the husband’s Zippo lighter … This lighter had a matte nickel finish.

… a gold graduation-gift fountain pen … This was an Eversharp Skyline fountain pen of 14K gold. Its companion mechanical pencil had been broken for years, and languished in a kitchen drawer.

… She was, of course, pregnant … She may well have been made pregnant by her husband, but he didn’t think so.

— XIII —

… sliced open his gum … The dentist — in a case such as this, surely, an oral surgeon — will replace the lost bone with liquid bone (biphasic calcium phosphate, or BCP), which ideally will grow as naturally as the patient’s own bones, ultimately replacing it, so that he is “as good as new.”

… and removes her skirt … Fantasies of sexual adventures with providers of medical care would seem to be well-nigh universal, at least among male patients.

— XIV —

… in the best tradition of the deathless cliché … “deathless cliché” is, of course, a deathless cliché.

… still famous for his charming mediocrities … That’s your opinion.

— XV —

… a sun-faded lime-green monster … The term “lime-green” does not truly describe the color of this vehicle, which was of one never seen or even approximated in nature.

… he took $147.34 … In 1960, this was a considerable sum. A yearly income of $5,000–$6,000 was enough to live on quite comfortably.

— XVI —

… at the Medical Field Service School … The school was attached to the Brooke Army Medical Center.

… The sky was turning rose and blue … Rimbaud dated “Rèvé pour L’Hiver” October 7, 1870, noting that it was composed “En Wagon,” or aboard a train. While it is rarely, if ever, a good idea to attempt a translation — a transliteration — of poetry into prose, this does have some of the flavor of the original — lacking, of course, Rimbaud’s brilliant casualness, his arrogant and elegant linguistic slouch.

— XVII —

… smelled of rancid and sour fat … In the early part of the twentieth century, this smell might have been called, in some working-class circles, “a far-away smell.”

… the way of Greek warriors … Other Greek warriors who dressed their hair in such wise: Agamemmnon, Menelaus, Ajax (both Great and Lesser), etc., etc.

… Odysseus … Odysseus was red-headed, a sign, perhaps, of his Achean roots.

… “a groove, man!”… Like, excellent. Back-formation, “Groovy.”

— XVIII —

… the booth of the diner … It might have been the Royal, Homer’s, Kirk’s, or the Bridge View.

— XIX —

… white rayon underpants … In the thirties, these were called “step-ins,” a curiously obvious name.

… her lunch dishes … Dishes probably bought at the local Woolworth five and ten. They were probably decorated with lead-painted flowers, or multicolored stripes.

— XX —

… under a mortar attack … The expertise of the Chinese with mortars was well-known among American troops during the Korean War.

… FECOM … An acronym for Far East Command.

— XXI —

… an improvisatory fantasia … There are many marriages that are based upon “improvisatory fantasias,” and why not? The notions of “honesty” in marriage, the revelation of all secrets, and “realism” seem to come from popular fiction of all sorts.

… “swell” … A word that is no longer in use, save ironically. The late painter and writer, Fielding Dawson, however, used the word without a trace of irony.

— XXII —

… a little girl in pigtails … These two figures looked vaguely dated.

… Handsome is as handsome does … This expression may, for some who are not concerned with linguistic subtleties, be transliterated, so to speak, as “actions speak louder than words.”

— XXIII —

… AMEN DICO VOBIS QUIA UNUS VESTRUM METRADITURUS EST … Which may be translated: “Amen, I say to you, there is one [of you] who will betray me.”

… in a summer pinafore … The pinafore is pink and white.

… The Make-Believe Ballroom … a radio program hosted by the D. J. Martin Block. The theme song, “It’s Make-Believe Ballroom Time,” was, I believe, the Glenn Miller version.

… to Jersey City?! … Jersey City was, and probably still is, unprepossessing at the best of times; in the “bitter cold” it could be thoroughly dispiriting.