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PARTISAN REVIEW
Like a giant little Roy sits with legs outstretched-the wheels
still spinning on his feet, not unlike the fluttering ankle-wings of
Hermes-on the floor among the toys in the Toy Department.
Here's a toy farm, a house, a barn, orchard-trees, and animals. Put
the man and his wife together in bed, take the cow from the :field
and put her in the barn; and dim the light: it is Night. Here is an
illuminated electric-locomotive clattering on the rails. Here is a
little War.
Huge Roy plays with our machines, with a derrick, an alcohol
steam-engine. Here's a whole town; pell-mell he scatters the col–
lection of so many houses, motorcars, and men and women about
him on the floor. And here is a War, with tiny cannon that actually
:fire thru the empty store a loud report.
Here are the undistributed letters of a game of anagrams (the
players of which do not realize how much they betray themselves
in the words they create).
-Sailing on one foot with the other comically lifted behind,
soaring with wide-stretched arms and baggy sleeves, speeding from
pleasure to pleasure, comes our Charley Chaplin, and when he does
so, no one can refrain from tears.-
On the fourth floor is the Furniture Department.. In a silk–
furnished ebony Empire bed in the form of a Sphinx, is sleeping
the Night-Watchman's daughter. Roy kicks off his wheeled shoes.
He loosens his belt and his trousers fall to the floor. Already his
little penis is erect, like an inquisitive little animal.
Each of the polymorphous acts of love strives to the maxi–
mum; if a boy is well-e!ucated by early corruption, they do not
give way to each other. Each kind of pleasure, struggling to be
more and more, passes :finally into uncontrollable excess. The little
body is afire, and now is the time for flaming thoughts. To play
with the toys until an orgasm of uncontrollable excess. And to
arrange the words to a moment of maximum pleasure.
THE MAXIMUM
To
have
each thing, to
tum
the attention to each thing, into
each thing-is the Maximum. It is always in excess, for there is
no room in the soul for a comparative measure.
Excess is the only prayer, because this is the thing that is given
