Guy Davenport Quotes

The poet is at the edge of our consciousness of the world, finding beyond the suspected nothingness which we imagine limits our perception another acre or so of being worth our venturing upon.

Art is always the replacement of indifference by attention.

When Heraclitus said that everything passes steadily along, he was not inciting us to make the best of the moment, an idea unseemly to his placid mind, but to pay attention to the pace of things. Each has its own rhythm: the nap of a dog, the procession of the equinoxes, the dances of Lydia, the majestically slow beat of the drums at Dodona, the swift runners at Olympia.

For Guy Davenport--whom he told me John Barth once called the last modernist--modernism is 'a renaissance of the archaic'.

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have a paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

Lives do not have plots, only biographies do.

The meaning of the world, said Wittgenstein, is outside the world. Events and values are distinguishable only in relation to others. A totality of events and values, the world itself, requires another.

The birds suffer their suffering each in a lifetime, forgetting it as they go.

The light is dying, as all light must.

Something of the previous state, however, survives every change. This is called in the language of cybernetics (which took it form the language of machines) feedback, the advantages of learning from experience and of having developed reflexes.

Bruiser stared in the mirror hanging in his locker and ran a comb through his blond hair, wishing he had dark hair like Harris, or a mean look like Zach, or even a guy-next-door like Derek. Hell no, he looked like a f***ing movie star and he f***ing hated it. –-Backfield in Motion

(...) We rise, we fall. We may rise by falling. Defeat shapes us. Our only wisdom is tragic, known to late, and only to the lost.

How can I shake and dispel the awful reputation of being an "erudite" writer? I’m about as erudite as a traffic cop. I like to know things; what’s so two-headed peculiar about that?

Man was first a hunter, and an artist: his early vestiges tell us that alone. But he must always have dreamed, and recognized and guessed and supposed, all the skills of the imagination. Language itself is a continuously imaginative act. Rational discourse outside our familiar territory of Greek logic sounds to our ears like the wildest imagination. The Dogon, a people of West Africa, will tell you that a white fox named Ogo frequently weaves himself a hat of string bean hulls, puts it on his impudent head, and dances in the okra to insult and infuriate God Almighty, and that there's nothing we can do about it except abide him in faith and patience. This is not folklore, or quaint custom, but as serious a matter to the Dogon as a filling station to us Americans. The imagination; that is, the way we shape and use the world, indeed the way we see the world, has geographical boundaries like islands, continents, and countries. These boundaries can be crossed. That Dogon fox and his impudent dance came to live with us, but in a different body, and to serve a different mode of the imagination. We call him Brer Rabbit.

The poet and poetess have always had a rough time of it in the Republic. It has ever been their endemic luck to starve, become a Harvard professor, commit suicide, lose their reading glasses before an audience of sophomores, go upon the people a la Barnum, and serve as homework in state universities, where they could in nowise get a position and where their presence usually scatters the English faculty like a truant officer among the Amish.

Of the autistically interior, dreaming, reading, erotic, self-sufficient child in Balthus' painting we have practically no image at all. Balthus' children are not being driven to succeed where their parents failed, or to be popular, adjusted, or a somebody.

nothing now exists that is so valuable as whatever theoretically might replace it.

Bonnie Jean (who thinks all philosophers are idiots) has this quarrel with Wittgenstein, who in several places says that reddish green is inconceivable. Yet every summer, when our peppers are drying from green to red, one can see an intermediate stage that is precisely reddish green.

Avoid the suave flow of prose that’s the trademark of the glib writer. An easy and smooth style is all very well, but it takes no chances and has no seductive wrinkles, no pauses for thought.

It is worthwhile adding that the power of the poem to teach not only sensibilities and the subtle movements of the spirit but knowledge, real lasting felt knowledge, is going mostly unnoticed among our scholars. The body of knowledge locked into and releasable from poetry can replace practically any university in the Republic. First things first, then: the primal importance of a poem is what it can add to the individual mind. Poetry is the voice of a poet at its birth, and the voice of a people in its ultimate fulfillment as a successful and useful work of art.

Reality is the most effective mask of reality. Our fondest wish, attained, ceases to be our fondest wish. Success is the greatest of disappointments. The spirit is most alive when it is lost. Anxiety was Kafka's composure, as despair was Kierkegaard's happiness. Kafka said impatience is our greatest fault. The man at the gate of the Law waited there all of his life.

What joke?” “The one about the guy who rolls a wheelbarrow full of sawdust out of a construction site every night.” “I don’t know that one,” Cochran said. Lucas said, “The security guy keeps checking and checking and checking the wheelbarrow, thinking the guy had to be stealing something. Never found anything hidden in the sawdust, and nobody cared about the sawdust. Couple of years later, they bump into each other, and the security guy says, ‘Look, it’s all in the past, you can tell me now. I know you were stealing something. What was it?’ And the guy says, ‘Wheelbarrows.

You have built a wall of concrete shit between yourself and reality.

... a boar is a very special kind of animal whose bristling is a thing unto itself, and his nape, like a snake's neck, is more a word than a reality.

Reality was the keener for being fugitive, concealed, and doubtful...

audience, not interrupting once, only darting a few disbelieving looks at him. ‘God Almighty,’ Painter said when Ryan finished. Davenport just stared poker-faced as he contemplated the possibility of examining a Soviet missile sub from the inside. Jack decided he’d be a formidable opponent over cards. Painter went on, ‘Do you really believe this?’ ‘Yes, sir, I do.’ Ryan poured himself another cup of coffee. He would have preferred a beer to go with his corned beef. It hadn’t been bad at all, and good kosher corned beef was something he’d been unable to find in London. Painter leaned back and looked at Davenport. ‘Charlie, you tell Greer to teach this lad a few lessons – like how a bureaucrat ain’t supposed to stick his neck this far out on the block. Don’t you think this is a little far-fetched?’ ‘Josh, Ryan here’s the guy who did the report last June on Soviet missile-sub patrol patterns.’ ‘Oh? That was a nice piece of work. It confirmed something I’ve been saying for two or three years.’ Painter rose and walked to the corner to look out at the stormy sea. ‘So, what are we supposed to do about all this?

Guy goes to the doc, and he says, ‘Doc, you gotta help me. I got this terrible headache. It feels like somebody is pounding a nail through my forehead. Like I got a big pair of pliers squeezing behind my ears. It’s tension from my job. I can’t stop working right now, but the headache’s killing me. You gotta help.’ So the doc says, ‘You know, I do have a cure. Exactly the same thing happened to me—I was working too much, and I got exactly the same headache. Then one night I was performing oral sex on my wife, and her legs were squeezing my head really tight, really hard, and the pressure must have done something, because the headache was a lot better. So I did this every night for two weeks, and at the end of two weeks, the headache was gone.’ And the guy says, ‘I’m desperate, Doc, I’ll try anything.’ The doc said, ‘Well, then, I’ll see you in two weeks.’ So the guy goes away, and two weeks later he comes back for his appointment and he’s the most cheerful guy in the world. And he says, ‘Doc, you’re a miracle worker. I did just what you told me, and the headache’s gone. Vanished. I feel great. I think it’s got to be the pressure, and—by the way, you’ve got a beautiful home.

Olson's Maximus and Zukofsky's 'A' are too symbolically and verbally complex, respectively, to command large audiences especially in an age when a college degree is becoming a certificate of illiteracy.

Though wickedly aware of his surroundings, he didn’t look around; looking around attracted the eye. People who saw him would ask themselves, “Why’s that guy looking around like that?” He’d learned not to do it.

You know, I believe every word you’ve said, but I don’t need this. I’ve got six officers working for me full-time, plus four reserve deputies and a dog, and the dog got his feet cut up on broken glass yesterday and he’s out of it for a week. That means two guys for busy shifts, one guy for others. The dog has the most experience. Not counting the part-timers, he might even be the smartest. I include myself in that. I’ve never investigated anything more complicated than mailbox theft.

A pettos speckled with gold ajiggle with a fremitus from the heart touches me like Athena's hoolet mewing in uncertain dark. So much is nature, whereon we build our particulars fastidious and critical. Your every arrow O Eros has hit me, as the song goes. O girls, girls. This arrow is Timo's curls, this is Heliodora's shoes, this the smell of quinces that blows from Demo's door, flowers plaited into Dorothea's hair and ox-eyed Antikleia's smile that is music from the islands, summer's stars.

Clay pulled Lucas along and as they were approaching the back door, he called, “Madam Secretary . . . I need you to meet this guy.” She stopped and turned and looked at Lucas and then Clay, did a quick price check on Lucas’s suit, and asked, “How do you do?

As Bowden worked the room, Jubek took Lucas around to all the other security people and told them to take a good look. “If this guy tells you something, you listen,” he told them. He gave Lucas his cell phone number, and said, as Lucas was leaving, “I sincerely hope you’re a self-aggrandizing bullshitter who’s trying to get attention for himself, but I looked you up and I’ve got the bad feeling you’re not.” “‘Self-aggrandizing.’ Pretty big words for a former lineman,” Lucas said. Jubek grinned and slapped him on the shoulder and said, “See ya.

She shook her head. “I don’t know the details, exactly, but he was a lobbyist for the Minnesota Apiary Association.” “You mean, archery?” Jeff asked. “No, apiary, Daddy. You know, honey bees. There was some kind of licensing thing going on,” Brittany said. “The state was going to put on a fee, and some of the bee guys said they wouldn’t bring their hives into Minnesota if that happened, and Tubbs thought that the bees were interstate commerce and so only the feds were allowed to regulate it. Or something like that. I don’t know. I wasn’t interested enough to follow it. But Bob was around.

The unexamined life is eminently worth living, were anyone so fortunate. It would be the life of an animal, brave and alert, with instincts instead of opinions and decisions, loyalty to mate and cubs, to the pack. It might, for all we know, be a life of richest interest and happiness. Dogs dream. The quickened spirit of the eagle circling in high cold air is beyond our imagination. The placidity of cattle shames the Stoic, and what critic has the acumen of a cat? We have used the majesty of the lion as a symbol of royalty, the wide-eyed stare of owls for wisdom, the mild beauty of the dove for the spirit of God.

He glanced at her: “Sure. You guys must be really close.” She was blunt: “Close enough to get your ass fired if you’re suggesting that Colles and I are sleeping together.” “I wasn’t suggesting that,” he muttered, rapidly backing off. “Try harder not to suggest it,” she said; her tone did everything but smear blood on the windshield. (Page 16)

OHHHH don’t make me cry, I’m a big strong guy, I can make you laugh and I’d never tell a lie, See my muscles on my legs when I swim, I can do back spins with the force of my fins. SOOOOO don’t make me cry, I’m a big strong guy, I can make you laugh and I’d never tell lie. The muscles in my heart are tougher than my shell, To “love” makes me stronger than to lift a barbell.” Willard the Sea Turtle, The Little People Journey into the Mystic Sea

She’d just come back when Marvel tapped the computer screen and said, “See, what happened was, this guy, Representative Diller, got the licensing fees on semi-trailers reduced by about half, so they’d supposedly be in line with what they were in the surrounding states. He said he wanted to do that so the trucking companies wouldn’t move out of Minnesota. But what you see over here is a bunch of 1099 forms that were sent by trucking companies to Sisseton High-Line Consulting, LLC, of Sisseton, South Dakota. Over here is the South Dakota LLC form and we find out that a Cheryl Diller is the president of Sisseton High-Line Consulting. And we see that she got, mmm, fifty-five thousand dollars for consulting work that year, from trucking companies.” “So if these two Dillers are related . . .” Lucas began. “I promise you, they are,” Marvel said. Kidd said, “Marvel’s a state senator. In Arkansas.” Marvel added, “This shit goes on all the time. On everything you can think of, and probably a lot you can’t think of.

THEY WALKED UP TO the front door, rang the bell. Del scratched his neck and looked at the yellow bug light and said, “I feel like a bug.” “You look like a bug. You fall down out there?” “About four times. We weren’t running so much as staggering around. Potholes full of water . . . I see you kept your French shoes nice and dry.” “English. English shoes . . . French shirts. Italian suits. Try to remember that.” “Makes my nose bleed,” Del said. The door opened, and Green looked out: she was still fully dressed, including the jacket that covered her gun and the fashionable shoes that she could run in. She took a long look at Del, and asked, “Where’re Dannon and Carver?” “Dead,” Lucas said. “Where’s Grant?” “In the living room.” “You want to invite us in?” She opened the door, and they stepped inside, and followed her to the living room. Grant was there, still dressed as she had been on the stage; she was curled in an easy chair, with a drink in her hand, high heels on the floor beside her. Schiffer was lying on a couch, barefoot; a couple of Taryn’s staff people, a young woman and a young man, were sitting on the floor, making a circle. Another man, heavier and older, was sitting in a leather chair facing Grant. Lucas didn’t recognize him, but recognized the type: a guy who knew where all the notional bodies were buried, a guy who could get the vice president on the telephone.

I God, a very Gomorry on wheels! You lead the most exciting life I know of, and complain more about it than any two well-off bastards in the running. I am glad to hear you sound like your old self, though I never hearn of no Jonathan with two Davids. Top of this letter is an allusion to that wonderful novel, The SotWeed Factor, in which Ebenezer Cooke, “poet and virgin,” is about to be raped by a buncher sailors (they have him tied across a table in the fo’c’sle; he is saved by a raiding party of pirates, one of whom strides into the scene and says, “I God, this here ship’s a very floatin’ Gomorry!” Have come down with the flu since inditing the above. [...]. The mail yestiddy brought a letter from Sam Beckett! asked to see Sappho and Arky. I sag with fatigue. Blessings. Guy

Cox knew the guys she was living with were criminals, but really it was more like the redistribution of wealth from Beverly Hills to Long Beach, almost like being a Democrat, so it was hard to see too much wrong with it. And nobody ever died.

Lucas glanced at him and said, with a grin, “Bell is sometimes too social . . . if you know what I mean.” “He talks too much,” Robertson said. “But he’s a good guy,” Lucas said. “Yeah, he is,” Robertson said. He leaned back in the seat and put his feet up on the dash, caught himself and said, “Whoops. Sorry about that.

Greer, a tall, thin man who looked like he might run marathons, shook hands and said, “Your reputation precedes you.” “Well, hell, nothing I can do about that,” Lucas said. “I’m in a rush, here, guys, but I need a couple of hot dogs and we gotta talk about how we’re gonna do this. If this is the sniper . . .” “Well, we got the hot dog place,” Wood said. “I brought a rifle and some gear for you, in case you didn’t have it.

Yeah,” Smalls said. “That’s the guy.

And there’s already a cop writer in the Cities.” “Mostly that one guy,” Lucas said. “Whatshisname. But his cop never does any paperwork. Or uses the can.

If they find something. . . .” “If they find something,” Lucas corrected himself, “then they might want a couple of hunters on the trail. Man-to-man. That’s us. I’d like you to go along. Not so much as a cop, but more like a good-luck charm. You’re a lucky guy. I personally rely more on intelligence and good looks.

It’s not that the Davenports had never had black people around their house before, or even a Chinese guy once, but never a Malaysian who looked Chinese to some and Indian to others, fancied himself black at times, and wanted to be the next Lenny Bruce Lee; a preppy black football player who sounded like the president and read Plato in Latin; and a white woman who occasionally claimed to be Native American. They were like an overconstructed novel, each representative of some cul-de-sac of idiolect and stereotype, missing only a handicapped person—No! At Berkeley we say handi-capable person—and a Jew and a Hispanic, and an Asian not of the subcontinent, Louis always said.

Carver turned away, stepped up to the counter, got a large cup of black coffee, and Lucas thought, Scalding hot coffee. Carver was a big guy, thick through the chest, but moved easily, comfortable with his size. Lucas wondered, if it came to a fistfight, if he could take him; and he decided he could. Lucas watched as Carver got his coffee and crossed to Lucas’s table, put the coffee on the table, and sat down and asked, “What is this bullshit?

He continued: “The other reason is, just look what happened. A guy who does dirty tricks is involved, somehow, with a really dirty trick, which could change an important election. He might have been paid for it. Maybe a lot. So if you take the simplest, straightforward answer to a complicated question . . .” “Occam’s razor . . .” Lucas nodded. “. . . the file was going from Tubbs to Smalls. A straightforward political hit.” “So, what you’re saying is, Tubbs probably took the thumb drive to Smalls’s office, and when Smalls was gone, inserted the file.” “Yes. Or more likely, an associate of his did. Whatever happened, for either side, Tubbs was probably murdered to shut him up. Neither one of us is going to be able to avoid that . . . fact,” Lucas said.

The short version of it is, he and a squad of special operations troops flew into a village in southern Afghanistan in two Blackhawks, with a gunship flying support. They were targeting a house where two Taliban leadership guys were hiding out with their bodyguards. They landed, hit the house, there was a short fight there, they killed one man, but they’d caught the Taliban guys while they were sleeping. They controlled and handcuffed the guys they were looking for, and had five of their bodyguards on the floor. Then the village came down on them like a ton of bricks. Instead of just being the two guys with their bodyguards, there were like fifty or sixty Taliban in there. There was no way to haul out the guys they’d arrested—there was nothing they could do but run. They got out by the skin of their teeth.” “What about Carver?” Lucas asked. “Carver was the last guy out of the house. Turns out, the Taliban guys they’d handcuffed were executed. So were the bodyguards, and two of them were kids. Eleven or twelve years old. Armed, you know, but . . . kids.” “Yeah.” “An army investigator recommended that Carver be charged with murder, but it was quashed by the command in Afghanistan—deaths in the course of combat,” Kidd said. “The investigator protested, but he was a career guy, a major, and eventually he shut up.” “Would he talk now? I need something that would open Carver up.” “I don’t think so,” Kidd said. “He’s just made lieutenant colonel. He’s never going to get a star, but if he behaves, he could get his birds before he retires.” “Birds?” “Eagles. He could be promoted to colonel. That’s a nice retirement bump for guys who behave. But, there’s another guy. The second-to-the-last guy out. He’s apparently the one who saw the executions and made the initial report. He’s out of the army now. He lives down in Albuquerque.

The DFL headquarters was a low white-brick building in a St. Paul business park across the Mississippi from downtown that possibly looked hip for fifteen minutes after it was built but no longer did. Lucas talked to a receptionist, who made a call. Schariff came out and got him, and said, “We’re down in the conference room.” “Who’s we?” Lucas asked. “Me and Daryl Larson, our attorney,” Schariff said. He was a stocky, dark-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard and dark-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a white shirt with a couple of pens in a plastic pocket protector. In any other circumstance, Lucas would have been willing to arrest him on the basis of the pocket protector alone. “I asked, and everybody said when you’re talking to a cop . . . especially one investigating the Grant-Smalls fight . . .” “Okay,” Lucas said. Larson was a tall, thin man whom Lucas knew through Weather’s association with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Larson raised money for the orchestra, usually by wheedling rich wives; it’d worked with Weather. When Lucas stepped into the room, Larson put down the paper he’d been reading and stood to shake hands. “Lucas, nice to see you. How’s Weather?” “Broke. She’s broke. She’s got no money left. She’s wondering how we’re going to feed the kids.” “Hate to hear that,” Larson said, with a toothy smile. “I’ll call her with my condolences.” The pleasantries out of the way, they settled into the conference chairs and Lucas outlined some of what he knew and believed about Tubbs’s disappearance. He finished by saying, “You guys are probably not going to want to talk about this, because when the media puts Tubbs’s disappearance together with the porn trick . . . it’s gonna look bad.

Lucas finished up at the urinal and walked over to wash his hands and said, “Say you’ve got a hot, rich politician running for office, but she’s losing, then her opponent is hit with a scandal involving child porn on his computers, then the guy you think put it there suddenly disappears and the politician turns out to have armed security people, including a couple of guys with thick necks who were in special operations in the army. What we unsophisticates call ‘trained killers.’ What do you think?” Jenkins paused, half of his face covered with shaving cream, the other half bare and shaven; he asked, “You got that much for sure?” “I’m being told all that,” Lucas said. “Have you hooked Tubbs to Grant?

It’s okay.” Lucas took a chair. “You need somebody killed?” “Several people, but I’d hesitate to ask, at least here in the office, on the Lord’s Day,” the governor said. He gave the papers a last shuffle, set them aside, pressed a button on a box on his desk, and said, “Get in here,” and asked Lucas, “You’ve been reading about Porter Smalls?” “Yeah. You guys must be dancing in the aisles,” Lucas said.

That’s bullshit, man,” Dannon said. “That whole thing is buried so deep, and the guys who buried it all have stars now. They’d never get you.” “That’s what I told him,” Carver said. “I think he’s going to do it anyway. I’m telling you, he’s a crazy mean cocksucker. He’s got nothing unless I talk, except the ’stan, and he’ll use it to bust my balls.

From what the army investigators say about what happened in Afghanistan, I don’t suppose the murders of a couple more people would bother you—nothing for me to work with, there,” Lucas said. Carver rolled his eyes up and sideways, as if to say, Please, the way New Yorkers say it. As if to say, Now you’re wasting our time. “That’s like asking me if I feel bad when somebody gets killed in a car accident. I mean, I gotta tell you, if I don’t know them, I don’t feel bad. It’s like that with this Tubbs guy. Don’t know him, never saw him. If I could snap my fingers and he’d come walking through the door, I’d do it. But feel bad, if he’s dead? No. Sorry.

Good. And I’ll tell you, Ron, we are going to put some serious shit on you. We’re also going to give you a way out. All of that gets canceled if you talk to Dannon or Grant. They’re the targets in this. We’ve already got a guy willing to swear that Dannon set up the porn deal for Grant. You can walk, or you can get added to the list. I’ll see you at three, and we’ll decide which it is.” Lucas clicked off without giving him a chance to answer.

Sands said to Rose Marie, “You can handle the politics. I think that’s proper. But the Tubbs murder . . . and what comes out of it, a definite finding on how the porn got on Smalls’s computer . . . is that St. Paul? Or is that us? St. Paul has been handling the case, and Detective Morris seems to have done an excellent job so far.” The chief never tried to catch that hot potato—he just let it fly by. “It’s you,” he said. “I’ll be goddamned if this department is going to investigate the Minneapolis department. That seems to be one of the critical questions, where the porn came from, and you guys have jurisdiction in Minneapolis. We don’t.” “That’s true,” Sands began. “However—” Rose Marie jumped in: “Henry, give it to Lucas.

You hear some guys might be looking at porn, some guys might be getting their knobs polished by the street girls, that some guys have a little too much cash, that some cocaine’s gone astray . . . you hear all that crap. And most of it’s crap. Backbiting bullshit.

That’s what you think, but not what you know,” Bradley said. “I’m not so much worried about you. If he shoots you in the coffee shop . . . then he’d have to kill the witnesses. And he could do that. He’s essentially already done it once.” Lucas hadn’t considered that, and said, “Huh.” “You’d be better off with a couple more guns in the shop,” Bradley said. “Probably Jane and me. He doesn’t sound like the type to be looking at women as potential combatants: he’d be too macho for that.” Jane was the other female agent, Jane Stack. Lucas said, “Let me think about it.” Shrake said, “Sarah’s exactly right. The rest of us look too much like cops, except Del, and he’d recognize Del. Let’s put Sarah and Jane in.” Lucas eventually agreed, and divided the group in two. “I don’t know when I’ll be talking to him, but I expect it’ll be late afternoon or evening. As soon as I find out, the first shift sets up. We’ll monitor the meeting—I’ll be wearing a wire—and then we’ll take him all the way through the day, until he goes to bed. This could be a very long night, with the election. As soon as we’re sure that the night’s over, Bob and his guys will pick him up, take him all day tomorrow, and then the first shift picks him up again tomorrow evening. We’re all clear on overtime. As soon as we leave here, the first shift should go on home, or wherever, get your shopping done, get something to eat . . .

D’aron the Daring, Derring, Derring-do, stealing base, christened D’aron Little May Davenport, DD to Nana, initials smothered in Southern-fried kisses, dat Wigga D who like Jay Z aw-ite, who’s down, Scots-Irish it is, D’aron because you’re brave says Dad, No, D’aron because you’re daddy’s daddy was David and then there was mines who was named Aaron, Doo-doo after cousin Quint blew thirty-six months in vo-tech on a straight-arm bid and they cruised out to Little Gorge glugging Green Grenades and read three years’ worth of birthday cards, Little Mays when he hit those three homers in the Pee Wee playoff, Dookie according to his aunt Boo (spiteful she was, misery indeed loves company), Mr. Hanky when they discovered he TIVOed ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ Faggot when he hugged John Meer in third grade, Faggot again when he drew hearts on everyone’s Valentine’s Day cards in fourth grade, Dim Dong-Dong when he undressed in the wrong dressing room because he daren’t venture into the dark end of the gym, Philadelphia Freedom when he was caught clicking heels to that song (Tony thought he was clever with that one), Mr. Davenport when he won the school’s debate contest in eighth grade, Faggot again when he won the school’s debate contest in eighth grade, Faggot again more times than he cared to remember, especially the summer he returned from Chicago sporting a new Midwest accent, harder on the vowels and consonants alike, but sociable, played well with others that accent did, Faggot again when he cried at the end of ‘WALL-E,’ Donut Hole when he started to swell in ninth grade, Donut Black Hole when he continued to put on weight in tenth grade (Tony thought he was really clever with that one), Buttercup when they caught him gardening, Hippie when he stopped hunting, Faggot again when he became a vegetarian and started wearing a MEAT IS MURDER pin (Oh yeah, why you craving mine then?), Faggot again when he broke down in class over being called Faggot, Sissy after that, whispered, smothered in sniggers almost hidden, Ron-Ron by the high school debate team coach because he danced like a cross between Morrissey and some fat old black guy (WTF?) in some old-ass show called ‘What’s Happening!!’, Brainiac when he aced the PSATs for his region, Turd Nerd when he hung with Jo-Jo and the Black Bruiser, D’ron Da’ron, D’aron, sweet simple Daron the first few minutes of the first class of the first day of college.

MICHAELA BOWDEN was a tall woman, thin, ramrod-straight, brown hair with copper highlights, attractive in a front-office way. She was talking to a small group of fawning locals, called a couple of them by name. Lucas picked out a half-dozen security people, four men, two women, within twenty feet of her. Every one of them eye-clicked Lucas, maybe smelling a guy with a gun, though he wasn’t wearing one. When they saw Clay pulling him along, they looked elsewhere.

His eyes pierced through me when they lifted to meet mine. “To go through the security tapes so I can figure out the name of the guy I’m going to kill.

The rule was: everything in its place. To this day I paint in one part of my house, write in another, read in another; read in fact, in two others: frivolous and delicious reading such as Simenon and Erle Stanley Gardner in one room, scholarship in another. And when I am away from home, I am somebody else. This may seem suspicious to the simple mind of a psychiatrist, but it seems natural enough. My cat does not know me when we meet a block away from home, and I gather from his expression that I'm not supposed to know him, either.

to TV people and sometimes these TV guys need to hustle a deal or hustle up some money, and Pilot’s women

an easy chair for Lucas. Lucas took it, gave them a quick summary of the Jones case, including the recovery of the girls’ bodies, and recited the details, as he remembered them, of the descriptions he’d accumulated on the man who’d called himself John Fell. “Fairly big guy, but

Really, really dead,” said the guard. And, “I think I shot him, too.” “You did,” Lucas said. “I think you hit him in the butt—that stopped him. Hell of a shot.” Greer had broken into a heavy sweat, looked like he might faint: “How many guys did he hurt?” Lucas said, “Three. At least three. All cops . . . man, you did so good. Listen, we . . .” He was suddenly aware of the distant sound of a band playing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and said, “Is that the march? Are they marching?

Oh, bullshit,” Jenkins said. “You do it because you like it, because you get that feeling in your balls like you’re in a falling elevator, and you like it. We all like it. We get all grim and warriored-up about it, but the bottom line is, we like it.” “That’s somewhat true,” Shrake admitted. “That’s why Davenport does it: it’s better than money,” Jenkins said. “You guys bum me out sometimes,” Virgil said.

Scars are the tale of the road we have traveled.” And the loves we’d lost. Yeah, not where I wanted to go, but I made myself listen. Safe in his arms, I let myself feel. Even if it sucked. I splashed ice cold water onto my face again, and the sounds of the guys returning filtered up from downstairs. Quickly I grabbed a hand towel to dry off my face. I’d splashed cold water over my face about ten times already in an attempt to wake my brain up and reduce the blotchy puffiness of crying. Not that I cared if the guys saw me looking less than my

In its practical sense, this axiom was the rule by which Shaker architects and designers found perfect forms. The American broom is a Shaker invention: a flat brush of sedge stems, sturdily bound, and with a long handle. (...) As an ideal, that form is the best response to the forces calling it into being has been the genius of good design in our time, as witness Gropius, Le Corbusier, Rietveldt, Mondriaan, Sheeler, Fuller. (...) A work of art is a form that articulates forces, making them intelligible.

I also wish I knew why millions of bright American children turn overnight into teenage nerds. The substitution of the automobile for the natural body, which our culture has effected in the most evil perversion of humanity since chivalry, is one cause; narcosis by drugs and Dionysian music is another.

Nothing I’ve ever done is as brutal as what corporate execs do all the time,” Lucas said. “I’ve never fired anybody. Never taken a perfectly innocent hardworking guy and screwed up his life and his family and his kids and his dog, because somebody needed to put an extra penny on the fuckin’ dividend.” “Communist,” she said. •

town a a couple of hours ago, from New Orleans, named Richard, or Ricardo, Santos. You really want to talk to him: this is probably his work. He’s got a car we don’t know about. He could be checked into Caesars. You can get a full bio on Beauchamps from Luanne Rocha, who’s a sergeant in the Robbery Special Section of the LA cops. I’ve got her number for you.” Harvey wrote down Rocha’s information. Another plainclothes guy, this one in a baby blue golf shirt over lightweight chinos, had come up to listen in and now said, “Shit, Tom, you already cleared the case. There’s nothing left to do. Go down to Caesars and grab the guy.” Rae: “Let me tell you something. If you start running this thing down and you stumble over Deese, you can’t go in with a sissy baby blue golf shirt. Deese killed a lot of people and ate some of them. He’s

Having some guy shine his flashlight up my asshole isn’t gonna improve my addition,” he said.

phone, twisted it out of her hand, and slammed it on the hook. “I cry good, don’t I?” she asked with a grin, and she was out the door.   “Davenport, Davenport,” Daniel moaned. He gripped handfuls of hair on the side of his head as he watched Jennifer finish the broadcast. “ . . . called by some the smartest man in the department, told me personally that he did not believe that Smithe is guilty of the spectacular murders and that he fears the premature arrest could destroy Smithe’s burgeoning career with the welfare department . . .” “Burgeoning career? TV people shouldn’t be allowed to use big words,” Lucas muttered. “So now what?” Daniel asked angrily. “How in the hell could you do this?” “I didn’t know I was,” Lucas said mildly. “I thought we were having a personal conversation.” “I told you that your dick was going to get you in trouble with that woman,” Daniel said. “What the hell am I going to tell Lester? He’s been out there in front of the cameras making his case and you’re talking to this puss behind his back. You cut his legs out from under him. He’ll be after your head.” “Tell him you’re suspending me. What’s bad? Two weeks? Then I’ll appeal to the civil-service board. Even if the board okays the suspension, it’ll be months from now. We should be able to put it off until this thing is settled, one way or another.” “Okay. That might do it.” Daniel nodded and then laughed unpleasantly, shaking his head. “Christ, I’m glad that wasn’t me getting grilled. You better get out of here before Lester arrives or we’ll be busting him for assault.”   At two o’clock in the morning the telephone rang. Lucas looked up from the drawing table where he was working on Everwhen, reached over, and picked it up. “Hello?” “Still mad?” Jennifer asked. “ You bitch. Daniel’s suspending me. I’m giving interviews to everybody except you guys, you can go suck—” “Nasty, nasty—” He slammed the receiver back on the hook. A moment later the phone rang again. He watched it like a cobra, then picked it up, unable to resist. “I’m coming over,” she said, and hung up. Lucas reached for it, to call her, to tell her not to come, but stopped with his hand on the receiver.   Jennifer wore a black leather jacket, jeans, black boots, and driving

When it comes to being around women, I wouldn’t trust that guy further than I could spit a Norwegian rat,” Lucas had grumbled.

Where you living, James?” Del asked. “You living with your mom?” “I gotta place. Look, I’m doing all right. I got a part-time gig with this guy. . . . I didn’t kill nobody. I don’t got a gun.