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Category Archives: Fiction Quoted
Americana
by Don DeLillo
America, then as later, was a sanitarium for every kind of statistic. We took care of them. We tried to understand them. We did what we could to make them well. Numbers were important because whatever fears we might have had concerning the shattering of our minds were largely dispelled by the satisfaction of knowing precisely how we were being driven mad, at what decibel rating, what mach-ratio, what force of aerodynamic drag. So there was a transferred madness, a doubling, between the numbers themselves and those who made them and cared for them. We needed them badly; there is no arguing that point. With numbers we were able to conceal doubt. Numbers rendered the present day endurable, heralded t… Continue Reading
Pafko At The Wall
by Don DeLillo
In the radio booth they’re talking about the crowd. Looks like thirty-five thousand and how do you figure it. When you think about the textured histories of the teams and the faith and passion of the fans and the way these forces are entwined citywide, and when you think about the game itself, live-or-die, the third game in a three-game playoff, and you say the names Giants and Dodgers, and you calculate the way the players hate each other openly, and you recall the kind of year this has turned out to be, the pennant race that has brought the city to a strangulated rapture, an end-shudder requiring a German loanword to put across the mingling of pleasure and dread and suspense, and when you think ab… Continue Reading
Already Dead, pages 17-18
…..He recognized her now. The Iron Curtain chick–immigrant from the tortured lands. Skinny, devoutly New Tribe–ethereal, yes. She had a beautiful face. She wore a white turban on her head.
…..Once or twice, but not lately, he’d dealt with her. The van she’d driven up in would be the Sheep Queen’s.
…..She looked a little wrecked, her mascara descending in streaks. Maybe she’d come from a party, left suddenly after a disastrous scene. Mussed and tearful. She was appealing like that. He wanted to participate in her fugitive chemistry.
–From Already Dead
by Denis Johnson
Zeroville, Chapter 134
There’s a contradiction between the way things happen like a movie yet don’t feel like a movie. The things in life that are like movies have profiles as well, the profile of how they happen and the profile of how they feel. When the stranger emerges from the shadows of the 405 with the gun, Zazi lets out a small scream; out of fear for the girl, Vikar resists the inclination to reach over and gouge the stranger’s eyes behind the stocking over his head. It’s not clear at first whether this is a burglary or an act of random violence.
–from Zeroville
by Steve Erickson
Posted in Fiction Quoted
Tagged Black Clock, James Franco, Steve Erickson, Zeroville
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End Zone
Page 111 (Penguin CAF edition)
(The spectator, at this point, is certain to wonder whether he must now endure a football game in print–the author’s way of adding his own neat quarter-notch to the scarred bluesteel of combat writing. The game, after all, is known for its assault-technology motif, and numerous commentators have been willing to risk death by analogy in their public discussions of the resemblance between football and war. But this sort of thing is of little interest to the exemplary spectator.
–End Zone
Don DeLillo
