PHILIP
ROTH
165
get drunk, time passes, the cat dies, we get another one, the kids are
off to college, I come down in the morning and see him eating break–
fast and reading the paper, alone in the kitchen like Willy Loman,
until finally, to escape breaking our bones on the ice, we retire to
St. Petersburg. Ending in the sun, Mom and Pop . And what in real
life can compare to the hope we keep holding out for? There aren't
solutions. There will never be all this pretty stuff. Macaroni salad and
grilled cheese - that would last about a day . Nothing is giftwrapped
and delivered to the door, no matter how much you give up to avoid
your traps. Why I didn't like books is because there
are
no plots and
there
are
no conclusions and there is no form to life that I can see.
Whatever form even is. Still, there is no doubt that I'm doing some–
thing wrong.
This is how I thought, drifting away, but what he did, I later
understood, was transmit to me important information, and I started
seeing where to go. Or seeing illusions again . This stuff in my head
moves so fast. It's unbearable thinking about oneself so much. God,
this is a full report, but that's the way my mind works, parenthesis
after parenthesis. I don't like it either .
If
works is even the word. I'm
so obsessed and snared because I think one man is the answer to all
that's wrong, to all the vicissitudes of my experience with bad luck.
The sheer strength required to start again and make it stick. The
blankets on the beach, the D.A. says. Remember? Fucking in the
waves, remember? Come down Friday night and have your heart
sliced open. No! Being the tormented cunt no longer interests me!
I'm not part of your big scream anymore! I threw all your presents
into the fireplace. I lit them. I burned everything.
I don't want you.
Come on down, lovely girl-wear that watery red flowing kind of
Hindu thing, wear your legs, your arms, your tits, wear your ass–
just do it with me on the phone, babe, now- NO!
What he might be looking for, what he wants to see in me - I'll
give it to him. I had marvelous intentions. Meant to make it so im–
pressive. Maybe if I can give him
half
of what he meant - Illlllliusions!
The child's voice and the child
has to go.
But even if it isn't here, I
think I grasp enough in general to inch myself up to working out
what my flaws really are . The lady at the liquor store put it correctly
when she told me that to amount to anything in this world you have
to have "finish-itus." Very late last night I started to do it, very heart–
lessly . But it could take another twenty years. To keep myself in a
