William Gass - Eyes - Novellas and Stories

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Enter the sublime, upside-down / inside-out world of William H. Gass. . in this case where the
 have it every which way, including up. . in a dazzling new collection of novellas and stories (six in all) from one of the most revered writers of our time, author of sixteen books, among them, the universally acclaimed 
 ("An extraordinary achievement"-Michael Dirda, 
); 
("Exhilaratingly ingenious"-Cynthia Ozick, 
cover); and 
 ("A literary miracle"-
). This enchanting, Gassian journey begins with "In Camera," an investigation into what is likely to develop when a possibly illicit collection of photographs becomes the object of a greedy salesman's loving eyes. . In "Charity," a young lawyer, whose business it is to keep hospital equipment honestly produced, offers a simple gift and is brought to the ambiguous heart of charity itself. "Don't Even Try, Sam" tells of the battered, old piano Dooley Wilson plays in 
as it complains in an interview of its treatment during the making of the picture. "Soliloquy for a Chair" is just that, a rumination by a folding chair in a barber shop that is ultimately bombed. . and in "The Toy Chest," Disneylike creatures take on human roles and worries and live in an atmosphere of a child's imagination.
A glorious fantasia; each, quintessentially Gass; each, a virtuoso delight.

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I believed Bobby until I didn’t. He messed up God and Goliath. He said God was four cubits and a span. And that Goliath came out of a hole in the ground. And sailed to heaven I n a kite.

Damn jellybeans. Curse of candy. The black ones are licorice. Beware. Damn licorice. But if lucky you found a nest with a chocolate bunny, hollow to the core, solid-eared, whose empty head you could bite off at the bow-tie line so that you could see straight down into the empty depths of Easter…If lucky. Something about worshipping the ceremonial sun. Nu nu nougat

A bun baked on Good Friday will never mold over and will last up to a year in the bed box curing coughs and ah hems and other people beside themselves with

Movement meant life so the rabbit froze in its toy tracks though the train was coming like death, more certain than shooting. This lack of maneuver was successful when performed among clumps of fiddle fern but out on the open grass it made them as obvious in their presence as a garden gremlin. I stood stone still once, in a similar fright at being surprised to see the bunny within a yard of me, oh what big eyes you have and why were you instinctified, or taught by your folks, to sit solemn as a breath held for the doc in a world of might-as-well-be water?

We say: toy truck toy theater toy train, why don’t we say toy beer? This query has been written with toy words. Toy words are impossible. Here is another question. Why don’t we say toy toy? I was pretending to pretend. I have been thinking about thinking. My toy train will have toy track, a toy engine, a toy station, but my toy truck will have real wheels. Ah…toss me…toss me a toy kiss. Can this caress be done with a real mouth?

My parents were ordinary. They wanted to murder me and I them, but only some of the time. I didn’t know they were ordinary; that everybody had a pair of nags to make life miserable. I thought other people’s parents were better than mine. Rather thine than mine. Could be sung. Into a sack. Like a breatholator. I used to yell train times into a cloth bag. It sounded like a station must, its echoes muffled, woofed from far away. I remember now I dreamed of boarding a car as it was puffing out of all relation to have adventures I had read about — goodbye the magic of masturbation, no, “madness” The paper tunnel would be dark inside like the wardrobe was, but only for a brevity unless it…unless it…unless it stopped there in the grim of forest lurk. Wooh, I would breathe and rebreathe into my bag. The long low moan of a distant molestation.

I wanted to be the kid the neighbors said was so happy and sweet how could he have murdered so many while living next door just down the street in a neighborhood where such things were rare to never, and he mowed our lawns for a decent fee. Whoopee, we’ve made the papers, our little subdivision has; and, although it owns only a few trees, it enjoys regular leaf collection, trash pickup and recycle bins, the quiet of banned motorcycles.

Actually, no one wants to murder anyone. If we would only disappear from the world — ma, pa, and me — I to a wine cellar to age at a vintner’s pace; ma and pa — every relative really — sent like the mischievous to a blackboard, there to be erased. But that’s not disappearing from the world. Heavens to Betsy! That’s name-dropping.

Today is one of my more lucid days. I put it down to the pleasure of unpacking my toy chest, no, the fun of finding my toy box, which was what Louise called her cunt when she fingered it just to put me off. Louise comes back to me, as if my memory of her had been waiting in my baseball mitt for me to recover it, the mitt soft the ball hard the autograph pale to the point of lavender, certainly not the indelible ink or the smooth warm thigh I signed and then drew like directions toward her furrow, she pleased as pink that across her creamy skin a caress left its maker’s mark, an arrow heralding her muff, so lightly haired it still felt alive when I touched it, compelling me to scream, not the effect desired.

It was so. It was my firm purpose to flee this strange place. I did not throw her down, she fell, she told me so, her skirt flew up like a frightened quail, two birds brought down with one boom of buckshot blown into the center of the group by my gun, fired low as they were leaving in a shapeless cloud, a pair that makes a tasty meal served by a suited darkie in the dining car of — what did I call it? — the Silver Queen — one sleeper, one diner, one coach at the will of the transinformer my stream lie nerrrrr my my my my my my my my my my my my my m

My toy chest was made of creamy wood the color of skin, and opened over the whole length of its back, and the entire width of its lifting, but boy, would you believe? its lid had a hinge that unfolded to prop the top — stay up, damn you — the way my father rested the Studebaker’s hood upon a rod when he learned that the old car had flunked its final trip and had to be towed to town Whe w

w hen I had my rails sanded so they shone, when the juice drove the engine that ran the cars that bore my dreams, I liked my toy train better than anything that ever played solitaire with me.

A doll is not a toy and should not be flung into a toy chest like an old glove or used in fits and starts of interest as one might eat a meal. But I flung mine. A rag, it was dressed in spots of paint like a palette. I flung it so Nettie’s head hit the lid and Nettie’s neck snapped like a flag in a wind. She was wearing a pair of new jeans when I got her, everybody giggling when I stripped the gift of its wrapping and there she was — what a present for a boy! — who laughed loudest? hardest? longist? That would be Enid the Round Face, so fresh with a pale light furze on her cheeks like a peach has, yes, a peach-girl doll made of her clothes and wearing a pair of little knitted jeans. And an apron. Right. Both came off and on. Your mo

ve. Checkered like a chessboard where the armies of the white gather to glare their glare at the blacks who return those glares with outbursts of tongue as large as that of a Samoan lapping dog. Stomp. I’ve seen them do. So. I said thank you very much for giving me one of your dolls, Eeeenid. Eenidd said, choking back a girlish giggle, I dinna give you a doll you dummy. But it’s funny. It suits you. To a hee hee, said she. Suddenly I was twelve, or fourteen. After I came out of the closet af

They were just little hills of wool, well, cloth of some kind, over which you could stretch jeans in time, I was told, for atonement, i.e. a way of being barefoot only not bare because no one walked on stones anymore. Af

No leather, whether or not you care. So There.

Snapped her neck.

Soft furry sweet peach. I would kiss it if I could. Munch me made eating celery and ice cubes

The train hove into view through the tunnel I made of papier-mâché for which I chewed the newsprint. My saliva. Really. You can briefcase it. I had a ticket for Toledo. A two bender. I’d take Enid with me to see Toledo.

By now I had a stack of tracks. Lots of curves for bends in the bed. Snap a neck on that giggling bitch who pretended she hadn’t given me a rag for my tenth/twelfth/fourteenth birthday. When shame overcame me. She had so many necks. As many as Medusa had snakes. And I have excuses. Af

Let us sing the dolly song. There has to be a piece that will fit this corner; somewhere in this box of one thousand small knobby jigs there are four. Let us dance the jig the jig the jigsaw. Shit. There is always a missing one. Even when you have just opened the box and there has been no opportunity for a straight edge let alone a corner to fall on the floor and be swept beneath the so

We wish to be stones, we do, we do,

and feel as a path does the steps of you.

We want to grow large like a gall on a tree

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