Clambake Quotes

I asked him at the clambake in 2001, at the writers' retreat Xanadu, what he'd done during the war, which he called 'civilization's second unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide,

Try as often as you can to give tribute to your friends, to stay in contact, to be at their momentous occasions. Drive across the country and go into debt to go to their weddings, fly across the country and be with them when their parents pass away. You cannot make any new old friends.

They're having a clam-bake. They're baking my clams. They're baking the clams pried from my steaming pond.

Our crab pots are out front, and Francis has fixed a big metal barrel right on the beach. He lights a good fire to get the water boiling, and after the crabs are cooked, we women sit on the patio shucking until we have a mountain of meat in the middle of the table. We stir up buckets of cocktail sauce from catsup, mayonnaise, Worcestershire, lemon juice, and celery salt, and the kids come running. They eat on their towels on the sand, soaking up as much sun as possible to get them through the next winter.

My mother was addicted to being rich, to servants and unlimited charge accounts, to giving lavish dinner parties, to taking frequent first-class trips to Europe. So one might say she was tormented by withdrawal symptoms all through the Great Depression. She was acculturated! Acculturated persons are those who find that they are no longer treated as the sort of people they thought they were, because the outside world has changed. An economic misfortune or a new technology, or being conquered by another country or political faction, can do that to people quicker than you can say “Jack Robinson.” As Trout wrote in his “An American Family Marooned on the Planet Pluto”: “Nothing wrecks any kind of love more effectively than the discovery that your previously acceptable behavior has become ridiculous.” He said in conversation at the 2001 clambake: “If I hadn’t learned how to live without a culture and a society, acculturation would have broken my heart a thousand times.” ***

The paintings never made me think, but they always made me feel.

There is often much good in the type of boss, especially common in big cities, who fulfills towards the people of his district in rough and ready fashion the position of friend and protector. He uses his influence to get jobs for young men who need them. He goes into court for a wild young fellow who has gotten into trouble. He helps out with cash or credit the widow who is in straits, or the breadwinner who is crippled or for some other cause temporarily out of work. He organizes clambakes and chowder parties and picnics, and is consulted by the local labor leaders when a cut in wages is threatened. For some of his constituents he does proper favors, and for others wholly improper favors; but he preserves human relations with all. He may be a very bad and very corrupt man, a man whose action in blackmailing and protecting vice is of far-reaching damage to his constituents. But these constituents are for the most part men and women who struggle hard against poverty and with whom the problem of living is very real and very close. They would prefer clean and honest government, if this clean and honest government is accompanied by human sympathy, human understanding. But an appeal made to them for virtue in the abstract, an appeal made by good men who do not really understand their needs, will often pass quite unheeded, if on the other side stands the boss, the friend and benefactor, who may have been guilty of much wrong-doing in things that they are hardly aware concern them, but who appeals to them, not only for the sake of favors to come, but in the name of gratitude and loyalty, and above all of understanding and fellow-feeling.

Muddled orange and rosemary, pine syrup, pine bitters, rye whiskey, and soda.

night of the murder on his own to set up his trick on Tony. If there

the screen door, Morgan began barking from down in Bud’s yard. The black lab was so loud Bunnie had to shout through her sniffles. “Don’t let Reggie bother you, Julia. He’s trying to protect me. He wants me to be happy in my new life. To fit in.” She stared toward Bud’s yard in exasperation. “That damn dog.” “Bunnie, do yourself two favors. Tell the cops about your connection to Stevie before they find it. And then take a plate of

You may think I’ve been alone in my life, but that hasn’t come from the town. That comes from me. It’s who I am. Your father was gregarious enough for two people—or for ten. I would hate for you to think I’ve been lonely. It just hasn’t been so.