PARTISAN REVIEW
31
plication is that in telling the story two years later in Dallas he hasn't
the nerve, or the style, or, assuming he ever had it, a full conscious–
ness of those feelings. It is really only here, and nowhere else in the
book, that he is apparently silenced. Effectively enough, at least, so
that the Chap which immediately follows, Chap 11, is the only one
in the book without one of D.J.'s Intro Beeps. And this is the Chap
in which the boys come close to a sexual joining. The surge of feel–
ing that builds up in the passage at the end of Chap 10 and carries
into 11 is noticeably free of the various cants and mixed media gags
that otherwise lace every phrase throughout the book, even while
carrying, as it must if it is to hint at existent if nearly inaccessible
elements in D.J.'s consciousness, just the faintest touch of his recog–
nizable style:
... and D.]. full of iron and fire and faith was nonetheless afraid
of sleep, afraid of wolves, full of beauty, afraid of sleep, full of
beauty, yeah, he unashamed, for across the fire and to their side
the sun was setting to the west of the pond as they looked north,
setting late in the evening in remembering echo of the endless sum–
mer evening in these woods in June when darkness never came for
the light never left, but it was going now, September light not
fading, no, ebbing, it went in steps and starts, like going down a
stair from the light to the dark, sun golden red in its purple and
purple red in the black of the trees, the water was dark green
and gold, a sigh came out of the night as it came on, and D.J.
could have wept for a secret was near, some mystery in the secret
of things - why does the odor die last and by another route?–
and he knew then the meaning of trees and forest all in dominion
to one another and messages across the continent on the wave
of their branches up to the sorrow of the North, the great sorrow
up here brought by leaves and wind some speechless electric gath–
ering of woe, no peace in the North, not on top of the rim, and
as the dark came down, a bull moose, that King Moose with
antlers near to eight feet wide across all glory of spades and points,
last moose of the North, came with his dewlap and his knobby
knees and dumb red little eyes across the snow to lick at salt on
the other side of the pond, and sunlight in the blood of its dying
caught him, lit him, left him gilded red on one side as he chomped
at mud and salt, cladding and wads dumping from his mouth to
plop back in water, like a camel foraging in a trough, deep in
content, the full new moon now up before the sun was final and
down silvering the other side of this King Moose up to the moon
silhouettes of platinum on his antlers and hide. And the water
was black, and moose dug from it and ate, and ate some more
until the sun was gone and only the moon for light and the fire
