olated them from birth, and when
they were mature and in heat, put
them together. Having no observed
precedent like normally raised
apes, they were thrown back on
instinct, forced to start from
scratch. They scratched, grappled,
growled, seized each other this way
and that-a psychologist's joke.
Finally, each one obtruding his or
her need, Nature triumphed, they
fitted compatibly together, copu–
lated. Here, in this arena, the
grappling, complicated by con–
sciousness, continues. These too,
grew in isolation, knew no prc–
cedent. They grapple too, evcry
conceivable which-way, but alas!
their needs are necessarily unob–
trusive, can never meet. But while'
there's grappling, thcre's hope, the
Bistro doesn't close till three, and,
by that time, they' ll be too heavy
with beer and too tired to carc.
Many of the h abitues wear the
"impassively disconsolate counten–
ance" attributed by Veblen to
servants aI)d priests. And so they
are-priests of nothing, servants
of everything, carrying all their
history on their backs, just as
homeless Japanese-antipodal vic–
tims of the same violence-pack
all their filthy tatters, reeking fish
and primitive appurtenances every–
where with them. How they came
here is a familiar story : they be–
gan by avoiding work to make
room for
work,
which obligingly
cancelled itself out to make even
more room, too much room, enough
for agoraphobia, whose antidote is
525
this. Others come partly out of a
desire to compare themselves in–
vidiously with the bartenders, who,
nothing .loath, always give thcm
their lumps, stopping just short of
sodomy.
In a whole week of Sunday
neurosis, the regular customers
show every day. On week-ends the
tourists pour in, to this Museum of
Natural History, to sec them in
their typical attitudes, posed by
the great taxidermist Himself.
What do you do? And what do
you do? And you, and you, and
especially you .
...
Like Buridan's
ass, they grow ever gaunter hover–
ing halfway between the
ple~,s ure
principle and the death instinct.
Most of the permutations and
combinations of sex and insulting
have been exhausted between them
and they accept each other in–
differently, like siblings with noth–
ing to stimulate their rivalry.
They're here to kill timc till it
kills thcm. Now and then, an
earnest voice, " likc the insistent
out-of-tune of a broken violin,"
pursues an
i.:;nis fatuus,
a hot fla sh
born of indigestion or fatiguc. At
We specialise in first editions and
out-of-print books by modern English
authors, and probably have in stock,
o r can obtain what you require.
Auden, Isherwood , Greene, Spender,
Gill, Koestler, Joyce, Sitwell, are but
a few of the auth ors of which we have
extensive, if not complete, stocks.
May we send you our lists, and re–
ceive you r "wants" lists?
BERNARD HANISON - Books
57 St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C.2.
England
