Postmodern Authors

"He reached his hand toward me. “You don’t mind my asking, do you?” “Of course not,” I say calmly as I reverse the lit end of the cigarette so that the flame is cupped in the palm. I reach for his handshake. He screams like a woman in distress with her skirt held high. I puff my meanness as he licks at the burn and whimpers, “You sonofagun. You’ve burned the dickens out of my hand.” “I know.” “But why? I didn’t do anything. I don’t even know you.” “I guess it’s my Samoan blood.” Sal rushes to my defense. He points his finger at the fag. “Out!” “But I didn’t do anything.” “Out, out!” he shouts, his hands stiffly on the bar. The old fag picks himself up and begins to drag himself out."

"The truth of the matter is that death is a mystery to me. I have no opinion on the subject."

"We had to fight the Okies because we were Mexicans! It didn’t matter to them that my brother and I were outcasts on our own turf. They’d have laughed if we’d told them that we were easterners. To them we were greasers, spics and niggers. If you lived on the West Side, across from the tracks, and had brown skin, you were a Mexican. Riverbank is divided into three parts, and in my corner of the world there were only three kinds of people: Mexicans, Okies and Americans. Catholics, Holy Rollers and Protestants. Peach pickers, cannery workers and clerks."

"On the way home from school, I’d go two blocks out of my way to pass by Lopez’ Pool Hall to look for cigarette butts that the veteranos had flicked to the sidewalk. They had G.I. hair cuts, their old, spit-shined paratrooper boots and the same khaki uniforms they wore to fight the Japs. I’d pretend not to notice them leaning against the building. With my head down, I’d walk along the gutter and just casually push the longer butts with my toe as if I were kicking a can or a rock … just a barefoot boy with cheek humhumming along the road on a hot summer day in his Huckleberry Finn strides, oh yes!"

"I’d kick the butt, without missing a step or crushing it, all the way to the corner, turn to see if they were looking in my direction, then pick it up and run to the little park behind the Santa Fe Depot where I kept my penny box of matches hidden in an old squirrel’s nest. Then I’d light her up and suck up the hot, delicious smoke that made one a man and life barely tolerable."

"That same night I went into the chicken coop, took my hooked knife which I used to pit peaches with, and carved her initials on the back side of my left hand … JA. Jane Addison. My first true love. The original Miss It. I was in such a fog that I forgot to cover it with a glove or something. At supper, right in front of my mother, my brother Bob said in a loud voice, “What’s that on your hand?” I pretended not to hear. I quickly switched my fork to my right hand and put my left hand under the table. “Hey, mom. Oscar cut himself,” the bastard said. “What?” she cried out. She couldn’t stand violence unless it was part of some beating to teach me respect."

"Manuel Mercado Acosta is an indio from the mountains of Durango. His father operated a mescal distillery before the revolutionaries drove him out. He met my mother while riding a motorcycle in El Paso. Juana Fierro Acosta is my mother. She could have been a singer in a Juarez cantina but instead decided to be Manuel’s wife because he had a slick mustache, a fast bike and promised to take her out of the slums across from the Rio Grande. She had only one demand in return for the two sons and three daughters she would bear him: “No handouts. No relief. I never want to be on welfare.” I doubt he really promised her anything in a very loud, clear voice. My father was a horsetrader even though he got rid of both the mustache and the bike when FDR drafted him, a wetback, into the U.S. Navy on June 22, 1943. He tried to get into the Marines, but when they found out he was a good swimmer and a non-citizen they put him in a sailor suit and made him drive a barge in Okinawa. We lived in a two-room shack without a floor. We had to pump our water and use kerosene if we wanted to read at night. But we never went hungry. My old man always bought the pinto beans and the white flour for the tortillas in 100-pound sacks which my mother used to make dresses, sheets and curtains. We had two acres of land which we planted every year with corn, tomatoes and yellow chiles for the hot sauce. Even before my father woke us, my old ma was busy at work making the tortillas at 5:00 A.M. while he chopped the logs we’d hauled up from the river on the weekends."

"Children of that age often fall downstairs, you did. Twice. You only worry if there's silence when they reach the bottom."

"One has to know how to swim just well enough to avoid having to save anyone else."

"If they were part of the self-correction (i. e., of the space-time continuum) what did that do to the notion of free will? Or was free will part of the plan as well?"

"The continuum had somehow managed to correct the incongruity, pairing off lovers like the last act of a Shakespearean comedy, though just how it had managed it wasn’t clear. What was clear was that it had wanted us out of the way while it was doing whatever it was doing. So it had done the time-travel equivalent of locking us in our rooms."

"“Servants don’t travel with their employers.” “How do they do without them?” ”They don’t.”"

"“That makes no sense,” I said. “This is the Victorian era,” she said. “Women didn’t have to make sense.”"

"It is a temporal universal that people never appreciate their own time, especially transportation. Twentieth-Century contemps complained about cancelled flights and gasoline prices, Eighteenth-Century contemps complained about muddy roads and highwaymen. No doubt Professor Peddick’s Greeks complained about recalcitrant horses and chariot wheels falling off."

"Management’ll never go for it. First, it’s live-animal research, which is controversial. Management hates controversy. Second, it’s something innovative, which means Management will hate it on principle."

"Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else—cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments—as long as the paperwork’s filled out properly. And in on time."

"You shouldn’t be looking for the secret to making people follow fads, you should be looking for the secret to making them think for themselves. Because that’s what science is all about."

"“Baine, what do you think of this?” Tossie said, indicating the bishop’s bird stump. “Don’t you agree it’s the most beautiful piece of art you’ve ever seen?” Baine straightened and looked at it, blinking water out of his eyes. There was a considerable pause while Baine wrung out his sleeve. “No.” “No?” Tossie said, making it into a screamlet. “No.”... “What do you mean, ‘no’?” “I mean the sculpture is a hideous atrocity, vulgarly conceived, badly designed, and shoddily executed,” he said, folding the shawl carefully and bending to lay it back in the bundle. “How dare you say that,” Tossie said, her cheeks very pink. Baine straightened. “I beg you pardon, miss. I thought you were asking my opinion.” “I was, but I expected you to tell me you thought it was beautiful.” He bowed slightly. “As you wish, miss.” He looked at it, his face impassive. “It is very beautiful.”"

"Barbie’s one of those fads whose popularity makes you lose all faith in the human race."

"Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?"

"“How dare you contradict their opinions! You are only a common servant.” “Yes, miss,” he said wearily. “You should be dismissed for being insolent to your betters.” There was a long pause, and then Baine said, “All the diary entries and dismissals in the world cannot change the truth. Galileo recanted under threat of torture, but that did not make the sun revolve round the earth. If you dismiss me, the vase will still be vulgar, I will still be right, and your taste will still be plebeian, no matter what you write in your diary.” “Plebeian?” Tossie said, bright pink. “How dare you speak like that to your mistress? You are dismissed.” She pointed imperiously at the house. “Pack your things immediately.” “Yes, miss,” Baine said. “E pur si muove.” “What?” Tossie said, bright red with rage. “What did you say?” “I said, now that finally have dismissed me, I am no longer a member of the servant class and am therefore in a position to speak freely,” he said calmly. “You are not in a position to speak to me at all,” Tossie said, raising her diary like a weapon. “Leave at once.” “I dared to speak the truth to you because I felt you were deserving of it,” Baine said seriously. “I had only your best interests at heart, as I have always had. You have been blessed with great riches; not only with the riches of wealth, position, and beauty, but with a bright mind and a keen sensibility, as well as with a fine spirit. And yet you squander those riches on croquet and organdies and trumpery works of art. You have at your disposal a library of the great minds of the past, and yet you read the foolish novels of Charlotte Yonge and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Given the opportunity to study science, you converse with conjurors wearing cheesecloth and phosphorescent paint. Confronted by the glories of Gothic architecture, you admire instead a cheap imitation of it, and confronted by the truth, you stamp your foot like a spoilt child and demand to be told fairy stories.”"

"“My physics teacher used to say Diogenes shouldn’t have wasted his time looking for an honest man,” Shirl said, “he should have been looking for somebody who thought for himself.”"

"And why take a chance on a new movie when they can do a sequel or a copy or a remake of something they already own? And while we are at it, why not star remakes in the remake? Hollywood, the ultimate recycler!"

"I’ve never understood why the faces, who have nothing to sell but an original personality, an original face, all try to look like somebody else. But I guess it makes sense. Why should they be different from everybody else in Hollywood, which has always been in love with sequels and imitations and remakes?"

"We came out on Hollywood Boulevard, on the corner of Chaos and Sensory Overload, the worst possible place to flash."

"In my log, there's nothing worse than working for a government with the guilts. All we were doing on Boohte was surveying the planet, but Big Brother didn't want anybody accusing them of “ruthless imperialist expansion” and riding roughshod over the indidges the way they did when they colonized America. So they set up all these rules to “preserve planetary ecosystems” (which was supposed to mean we weren't allowed to build dams or kill the local fauna) and “protect indigenous cultures from technological contamination” (which was supposed to mean we couldn't give ’em firewater and guns), and stiff fines for breaking the rules. Which is where they made their first mistake, because they paid the fines to the indidges, and Bult and his tribe knew a good thing when they saw it, and before you know it we’re being fined for making footprints, and Bult’s buying technological contamination right and left with the proceeds."

"Kepe from haire. Der fevreblau hast bifallen us."

"Ah, Hollywood, where everybody wants to be in the movies and nobody’s ever bothered to watch one."

"“Contrary to popular belief, the computer graphics revolution didn’t kill the musical,” the prof said. “The musical kicked off,” he paused to let the class titter, “in 1965.… “The musicals, with their contrived storylines, unrealistic song-and-dance sequences, and simplistic happy endings, no longer reflected the audience’s world.”"

"“The clerk is dying, Rosemund is dying, you’ve all been exposed. Why shouldn’t I give up hope?” “God has not abandoned us utterly,” he said. “Agnes is safe in his arms.” Safe, she thought bitterly. In the ground. In the cold. In the dark."

"Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century."

"Nobody deserves this. “Please,” she prayed, and wasn’t sure what she asked. Whatever it was, it was not granted."

"“They’re absolutely necrotic, aren’t they?” Colin whispered behind his order of service. “It’s late twentieth century atonal,” Dunworthy whispered back. “It’s supposed to sound dreadful.”"

"“Why is it,” Joss said, “that whenever I find you, you are always about to hop in bed with my employer?”"

"It’s the light, she thought. Everyone looks like a cutthroat by torchlight. No wonder they invented electricity."

"It doesn’t matter, she thought, and realized in spite of everything, horror after horror, Roche still believed in God. He had been going to the church to say matins when he found the steward, and if they all died, he would go on saying them and not find anything incongruous in his prayers."

"“What’s going on?” I whispered to Gina. “Management is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they don’t have enough to do,” she murmured back. “So they’ve invented a new acronym.”"

"“Do you like Denver?” “Sure,” I said. I found the pocket-sized recorder and laid it on the table. “Smog, oil refineries, traffic. What’s not to like?”"

"“Fifty-nine,” Mr. Mowen said. “That’s too many coincidences to just be a coincidence.”"

"“I’m a scientist, not a psychiatrist. I don’t believe dreams have a ‘real’ meaning. They’re a physical process, and any ‘reality’ they have lies in the physical. Freud made no attempt to understand the physical. He felt the key to understanding dream lay in content, and came up with an elaborate system of symbols to explain the images in dreams.”"

"He sorted all the mail into three piles of “for” and “against” and “wildly insane,” then threw all of them into the wastebasket."

"A cage is a safe place as long as nobody has the key."

"Do you suppose Walter Hunt would have invented the safety pin if he had known that punk rockers would stick them through their cheeks?"

"“In my opinion, dream interpretation as practiced by most Freudian psychiatrists, including some of mine at the Institute, is nothing more than a fancy system of guessing. I think trying to understand the ‘real’ meaning of a dream without reference to the physical state of the dreamer is as pointless as trying to understand what a fever ‘means’ without studying the body.”"

"One of the greatest difficulties I encounter in my research is that people want to believe that their dreams mean something, but all the research I’m doing seems to indicate just the opposite."

"I would never save her. I looked at the woman mopping up the tea, and it came to me that I could not save her either. Enola or the cat or any of them, lost here in the endless stairways and cul-de-sacs of time. They were already dead a hundred years, past saving. The past is beyond saving. Surely that was the lesson the history department sent me all this way to learn. Well, fine, I’ve learned it. Can I go home now?"

"Therein lay the secret to all fads: the herd instinct. People wanted to look like everybody else. That was why they bought white bucks and pedal pushers and bikinis. But someone had to be the first one to wear platform shoes, to bob their hair, and that took the opposite of herd instinct."

"There are moments when rather than reforming the human race I’d like to abandon it altogether and go become, say, one of Dr. O’Reilly’s macaques, which have to have more sense."

"The relationship of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will be increasingly tend to, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume--that is, the form of knowledge."

"Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter the postmodern age."