"In school I ended up writing three different papers on "The Castaway" section of Moby-Dick, the chapter where the cabin boy Pip falls overboard and is driven mad by the empty immensity of what he finds himself floating in. And when I teach school now I always teach Crane's horrific "The Open Boat," and get all bent out of shape when the kids find the story dull or jaunty-adventurish: I want them to feel the same marrow-level dread of the oceanic I've always felt, the intuition of the sea as primordial nada, bottomless, depths inhabited by cackling tooth-studded things rising toward you at the rate a feather falls."
"I pick up the list of Benji's five favorite books because we've got work to do: "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. He's a pretentious fuck and a liar. "Underworld" by Don DeLillo. He's a snob. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. He's a spoiled passport-carrying fuck stunted in eighth grade. "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace. Enough already. "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane. He's got Mayflowers in his blood." --
"I pick up the list of Benji's five favorite books because we've got work to do: "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. He's a pretentious fuck and a liar. "Underworld" by Don DeLillo. He's a snob. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. He's a spoiled passport-carrying fuck stunted in eighth grade. "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace. Enough already. "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane. He's got Mayflowers in his blood."
" "I saw a dog pursuing automobiles; On and on he sped. I was puzzled by this; I accosted the dog. 'If you catch one,' I said 'What will you do with it?' 'Dumb cat,' he cried, And ran on."
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.
But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step. He did not risk it to save a soul. For how was he to know that there was a soul before him that needed saving?