| 1. Brush your teeth: Eli, the contract killer at the centre of this book, is taken with the new craze for tooth powder and oral hygiene. He shares his tooth brush with his killing-partner and brother, Charlie. Handing back the brush and powder he said, ‘There is a very fine feeling.’ ‘That is what I’ve been telling you.’ ‘It is as though my entire head has been cleaned.’ ‘We might pick you up a brush of your own in San Francisco.’ ‘I think we may have to.’ |  |
2. O my brother: Like Jim Shepard, DeWitt gets at that awful and ineffable complex of regard and regret that one brother can feel for an older, more volatile one. The novel’s great achievement is to enable Eli to rescue his brother, temporarily at least, ‘from all earthly dangers and horrors’.
3. Frontier of abandon: Speech of the Book goes to a man holding a chicken in San Francisco, who explains for Eli the mad, expensive, destructive energy of the ‘Go West’ enterprise.
Yesterday I saw a man leap from the roof of the Orient Hotel, laughing all the way to the ground, upon which he fairly exploded. He was drunk they say, but I had seen him sober shortly before this. There is a feeling here, which if it gets you, will envenom your very center. It is a madness of possibilities.
(For a brilliant exploration of this book, visit Bill Nelson's This Is Writing?)
3. Frontier of abandon: Speech of the Book goes to a man holding a chicken in San Francisco, who explains for Eli the mad, expensive, destructive energy of the ‘Go West’ enterprise.
Yesterday I saw a man leap from the roof of the Orient Hotel, laughing all the way to the ground, upon which he fairly exploded. He was drunk they say, but I had seen him sober shortly before this. There is a feeling here, which if it gets you, will envenom your very center. It is a madness of possibilities.
(For a brilliant exploration of this book, visit Bill Nelson's This Is Writing?)
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