Sadness (short stories)

"His assistants cluster about him. He is severe with them, demanding, punctilious, but this is for their own ultimate benefit. He devises hideously difficult problems, or complicates their work with sudden oblique comments that open whole new areas of investigation—yawning chasms under their feet. It is as if he wishes to place them in situations where only failure is possible. But failure, too, is a part of mental life. "I will make you failure-proof," he says jokingly. His assistants pale."

"Perpetua sat on the couch in her new apartment smoking dope with a handsome bassoon player. A few cats walked around. “Our art contributes nothing to the the revolution,” the bassoon player said. “We cosmetize reality.” “We are trustees of Form,” Perpetua said. “It is hard to make the revolution with a bassoon,” the bassoon player said. “Sabotage?” Perpetua suggested. “Sabotage would get me fired,” her companion replied. “The sabotage would be confused with ineptness any way.” I am tired of talking about the revolution, Perpetua thought. “Go away,” she said. The bassoon player put on his black raincoat and left. It is wonderful to be able to tell them to go away, she reflected. Then she said aloud, “Go away. Go away. Go away.”"

"But now a green Railway Express truck arrives at his door. It contains a field of stainless-steel tulips, courtesy of the Mayor and City Council of Houston, Texas. The genius signs the receipt, smiling..."

"Perpetua went to her mother’s house for Christmas. Her mother was cooking the eighty-seventh turkey of her life. “God damn this turkey!” Perpetua’s mother shouted. “If anyone knew how I hate, loathe, and despise turkeys. If I had known that I would cook eighty-seven separate and distinct turkeys in my life, I would have split forty-four years ago. I would have been long gone for the tall timber.” Perpetua’s mother showed her a handsome new leather coat. “Tanned in the bile of matricides,” her mother said, with a meaningful look."

"I went to a party and corrected a pronunciation. The man whose voice I had adjusted fell back into the kitchen. I praised a Bonnard. It was not a Bonnard. My new glasses, I explained, and I’m terribly sorry, but significant variations elude me, vodka exhausts me, I was young once, essential services are being maintained."

"At night I drank and my hostility came roaring out if its cave like a jet-assisted banshee."