Chapter Two:
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

"The plates hated the silver, who in turn hated the glass.
They sang cruel songs at each other. Ping. Clank. Tink.
This kind of meanness three times a day."
- Marshall France, Peach Shadows

There is one important quality of Jonathan Carroll's writing, especially evident in The Land of Laughs, that has so far gone largely unmentioned, and that is its realism. It should be evident from the outline of the plot we have so far covered as well as from the excerpts quoted, that whatever "quirky, wondrous, magical" phenomena are lying in wait in the pages of the novel, both its author and his characters stand firmly with both feet on the solid ground. It is mostly due to this uncompromising realism (in the development of the plot, in the descriptions of setting, in psychological portraits) that readers may be at a loss when trying to "locate" the novel on the genre continuum and trying to predict the events to come. The rigorous insistence on realism enables Carroll to achieve two effects that are vital for the novel's reception. First, he manages to win the readers' belief (or, to speak in more precise terms, the suspension of disbelief) as to the whole situation within the novel and the actions taken by its protagonists. Secondly - and this is a direct consequence of the previous argument - when eventually the push comes to shove and the world as we know it gives way to the sinister and magical drama (the literal cracks which will soon appear in the Galen sky), not only is the intentional shock all the greater, but at the same time it is no longer easy for the reader to "switch" the register of expectations: having come so far it is more natural to continue "believing" than to revise the approach and recreate the novel's contrived world from scratch. The following excerpt by an undeniable authority on the subject, Stephen King, refers originally to the cinematic art, but seems equally suitable for enlightening our discourse here: "We might be able to say, paradox or not, that movies of fairy-tale horror demand a heavy dose of reality to get them rolling. Such reality frees the imagination of excess baggage and makes the weight of unbelief easier to lift. The audience is propelled into the movie by the feeling that, under the right set of circumstances, this could happen."(11)

A shorter, more aphoristic in form, is the opinion on the same subject expressed by another acclaimed horror writer, Anne Rivers Siddons: "Without belief there is no terror." (12) When the time for terror comes in The Land of Laughs, the belief will have already been firmly established.

We rejoin Thomas and Saxony as they are driving towards the town of Galen: apprehensive and uncertain of how they are going to be welcomed there, but at the same time quite happy to be on their way, at the verge of fulfilling their lifelong dreams. They are enjoying the drive and take their time to talk, argue, see the sights and make love in the motels on the long way from Connecticut to Missouri. The conventional narrative techniques that Carroll employs are particularly easy to observe in this section, as the changes in nature seem to reflect the emotional changes and the state of the relationship of the characters and - but the irony of this is almost evident - may be perceived as signs of warning, indicating that the world into which Thomas and his friend are venturing is not quite friendly after all(13):

A big thunderstorm was brewing up in front of us, and we drove into a lowering curtain of smoky pearl clouds. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the sun still shining down on where we'd just come from. I knew that most of the people back there had no idea of what they were in for later that afternoon. (LL, p.44)

We were just at the crossing for what, five or eight minutes, right? Well, in the East if you were there half that long there would be a line of cars ten miles long waiting to go. Here... well, just look behind us. You see? Not a car. Not one. That's your difference. (LL, p.54)

When the train was gone, the red-and-white-striped bars began rising slowly, almost as if they were tired and weren't in the mood to go up.(14)

Whatever ominous symptoms may lurk in Galen air, Jonathan Carroll's skillful handling of the scenes ensures that we will not be haunted by the gruesome mood for long - comic relief is always on its way, as in the following passage where Thomas' appetite and Saxony's impatience lead to a brief fight (anxiety causing their nerves to run on the last fuse, always ready to short-circuit) which soon breaks into cracks of laughter:

'All right, do you want something to eat or what?'

'Eat? Why? We've only been on the road for an hour.'

'Oh, well, I'm sorry, dear - I'm not supposed to be hungry, huh? I'm not allowed to eat anything unless you do, is that it?' I sounded like a kid who's just discovered sarcasm but doesn't know how to use it yet.

'Just shut up, Thomas. Go outside and have a fishburger or something. I don't care what you do. I don't deserve your anger.'

There wasn't much else I could do but go. We both knew that I was making more and more of an ass of myself, but by then I didn't know how to stop. If I'd been her, I would have been royally bored by me.

'Do you want any...? Oh, shit, I'll be back in a little while.'

I opened the door and stepped right into this monstrous puddle, drenching both my sneaker and sock in one plunge. I looked to see if she'd been watching, but her eyes were closed, hands still folded in her lap. I put my other, dry foot carefully into the puddle and left it there until I felt the cold seeping in. Then I paddled both feet up and down in my new little footbath. Splish splat.

'What...are...you...doing?'

Splish splat.

'Thomas, don't do that.' She started to laugh. It sounded so much better than the rain. (LL, p.47-8)

'Jeez, I couldn't say what my favorite scene is. Something out of The Land of Laughs, though. Definitely. But I'd have trouble choosing between a funny scene and a magical one. In many ways I like the funny scenes more now, but when I was little those battles between the Words and the Silence... phew!'

'Thomas, don't drive off the road.'(15)

The air smelled of hot dust and something else.

'Hey, look, Sax, a barbecue! Let's have some lunch.'

A big green canopy had been set up in an open lot between Phend's Sporting Goods and the Glass Insurance Company.

Underneath the canopy about twenty people were sitting at redwood picnic tables, eating and talking. A hand-painted sign in front announced that it was the annual Lions Club barbecue. I parked the car next to a dirty pickup truck and got out. The air was still and redolent with the smell of woodsmoke and grilled meat. A slight breeze pushed by. I started to stretch, but when I happened to look toward the eaters I stopped in midflight. Almost all of them had stopped eating and were looking at us. Except for one nice-looking woman with short black hair who was hurrying by with a couple of boxes of hamburger rolls in her hands, they were all frozen in position - a fat man in a straw hat with a sparerib held near his open mouth, a woman pouring an empty Coke into a full cup, a child holding a stuffed pink-and-white rabbit over his head with two hands. 'What is this, Ode on a Grecian Urn?' I mumbled to no one. (LL, p.54)

First of all, the scene is too static not to be disturbing. It is unusual enough to have a large group of strange people stop doing whatever they were and look at one intently; no wonder that one subject to such scrutiny begins to feel oppressed. But less directly, this motionlessness can be understood as characteristic of artifacts, as opposed to living creatures. For the sake of the analysis we have to reveal most of Marshall France's mystery right now, a long time before Thomas and Saxony are allowed this knowledge: the whole population of Galen (with the exception of two persons) consists of people who were not born but created, "written" by France. Although they appear to lead normal lives, they cannot be described as exactly human: the essence of their existence is that they are very much "works of art." In this light, neither the lack of movement in the scene nor Thomas' invocation of the famous poem by Keats should remain unexplained. Furthermore we will notice that there is one person moving among all that stillness: she will soon turn out to be Anna France, the daughter of the writer and a woman of flesh and blood. To add a few lesser insights: the pouring of an empty Coke into a full cup suggests reversal (of what, we cannot yet tell - but "of the cause and effect chain" is a good guess); the pink-and-white color of the boy's rabbit is almost red-and-white (these somehow symbolic colors will reappear at least twice more), and the rabbit itself can easily lead to associations with magic, but "white" rather than "black," as the very softness of the toy confirms.

Whatever bizarre associations this scene might suggest, they pass rapidly as "stop-motion" changes into "play." Recovering from the fleeting shock Thomas and Saxony join the townspeople at the barbecue: there is a lot of friendly banter and tasty food waiting to be ordered. Saxony is fast to reveal the reason why they came to the town which sets the Galeners wary and makes Thomas angry at her, but even this is soon forgotten as they are introduced to Anna France, who turns out to be an attractive woman in her late thirties. Thomas remarks:

All in all, she was great-looking in a kind of hip, clean, youngish Midwestern housewife way. Where the hell was the Charles Addams character David Louis had referred to? This woman looked like she'd just had the family station wagon washed at the Shell station. (LL, p.61)

I looked at their two faces and tried not to think that Anna was lovely and Saxony was wholesome. Maybe it was just my temporary anger at Sax. (LL, p.62)

I've been against it because the people who have wanted to write about him have come out here to our town for all the wrong reasons. They would all like to become an authority on Marshall France. But when you talk to them it's easy to see they aren't interested in what kind of man he was. To them he is just a literary figure. (...) If you had known my father, Mr. Abbey, you would understand why I'm so sensitive about this. He was a very private person. (...) Everybody knew him and liked him, but he hated being in the public eye and worked very hard to avoid it. (LL, p.63)

It was great. To get there you went up a flagstone walk that cut through a garden of six-foot high sunflowers, chestnut-size pumpkins, watermelons and tomato vines. According to her, the only kind of garden she could see was one that you ate. She didn't hold with roses and honey-suckle, no matter how good they smelled.(16)

Before we go on, a digression. In The Land of Laughs (as probably in any novel of conventional narrative style) we may observe three different modes of description, performing different but complementary tasks. First of all, there are descriptions that have immediate relevance to the course of action and to the readers' grasp of the story line: e.g. physical portrayal of the characters which allows us to "understand" them, build their images - here this function is particularly important for developing a consistent image of Marshall France, whom we get to know on "second-hand" basis only, retrieving his portrait from other people's memories, the inventory of his belongings and the look of his house, which his daughter has left very much unchanged since his death.

Secondly, there are the descriptions which are not related directly to the events in the novel, and could possibly be omitted without causing the readers to have trouble understanding the plot or even interpreting the novel. These however play an equally important role: they serve to establish an "atmosphere" that the author intends his audience to react to, they may create or destroy the readers' expectations of what is to follow. This category will include most of the descriptions of Galen, which will usually suggest that it is a regular, maybe a little dull, but not in any way bizarre town, as in the passage that reads:

A lawnmower whined somewhere and the air smelled of cut grass, and of oil and gasoline when we passed Bert Keener's Exxon Station. A guy was sitting in front of the office in a red aluminum lawn chair with a can of beer propped on a pile of old worn tires nearby. (LL, p.71)

Finally - and this is where we are getting to the crucial point - there are the descriptions that do not appear to serve any particular role within the narrative. There is an amount of them in most novels and, usually quite short, the are easily skipped while reading - and if noticed, they may be dismissed as mere "fillers" whose presence is perhaps justified by their aesthetic value, or the purpose they might serve as intermissions between passages of fast-paced action, enhancing the suspense and giving the readers time to slow down, to reflect on what has recently been said. If, however, we encounter a fragment like this in the early parts of the novel, when too little has happened so far to require any kind of slowdown and moreover, when the passage is too short to serve as this kind of filling, we need to decide on how to treat it. We may either insist on the uselessness of such a passage (and that would bear on our judgment of the artistic values of the novel) or try to find in it some hidden, possibly symbolic meanings.(17)

While Thomas and Saxony are walking down the streets of Galen toward Anna's house, the following image is provided:

It was the beginning of the evening, and the sky had cleared to cobalt blue with a streak of sharp white airplane exhaust vapor through its center. (LL, p.71)

On the second reading, however, the meaning well-hidden in the airplane passage becomes perfectly clear: what we have there is a literal crack running through the very center of the Galen sky. It is since this particular moment that the novel begins to take a more sinister turn and to its main characters, Thomas Abbey and Saxony Gardner, whatever events occur and sights appear, the world of Galen is becoming "curiouser and curiouser" (a lovely phrase borrowed from Alice in Wonderland 18).

Arriving at Anna's, Thomas and Saxony face another setback. Having been told at the barbecue about how the Galeners, who appear to be a pretty exclusive society, prevented some outside people from setting up a business in their town, they are made to wonder yet again if they perhaps are rather unwelcome guests in Galen:

I looked at the floor and saw a matching brown mat that said 'GO AWAY!' I nudged Saxony and pointed to it.

'Do you think she means us?'

That's all I needed. I had thought the mat was a funny idea, (19) and then she had to make it into something else to worry about. What if Anna really didn't want us-

'Hi. Come in. I'd better not shake hands with you. I'm a little greasy from the chicken.' (LL, p.73)

As for the house itself, the key word for describing it is definitely "exotic." Overwhelmed and enchanted, Thomas says only: "It's all him. It's completely Marshall France." (LL, p.75) Marshall France collected masks - like Thomas - and marionettes, like Saxony, among which he had an original work by Paul Klee. Everything is "in the mood" there, and most of the images in this section are directly related to art, but whether "high" or "low" one can not always decide as the sublime is so often undermined by the decadent (e.g. the soundtrack from Cabaret playing in the background). There is a wooden ceiling fan there which hangs unmoving, as if to suggest that the air we're breathing is the air which Marshall France would himself breathe, nothing has been changed, or stirred, since the time he died. Among France's books biographies and autobiographies, ranging from Mein Kampf to Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, take the prominent place. We learn about France's fascination with trains and train stations, of which he had an impressive collection of postcards. The whole house resembles a huge museum of artifacts, but some of these items are not for display only: they are the part of everyday life where nothing is allowed to be ordinary. Sitting at the dinner table Thomas (who is going to find the food horrible again) is amazed to see the cutlery:

My fork was a silver clown. His head was bent back and the tines of the fork came out of his open mouth. My knife was a long-muscled arm holding a kind of paddle. Not Ping-Pong or anything like that; more sinister-looking - the sort of thing they smack kids with in English public schools. Saxony held hers up to the light, and they were completely different. Her fork was a witch riding a broom. The tines were the brush part, the shaft the broomstick. (20)

The first thing I saw when I got there was the green ice cream, half-covered with dirt and pebbles and already beginning to melt on the black pavement.

No one else was around. I came up to [the driver] and hesitantly peered over his shoulder. He smelled of sweat and human heat. The boy was on his side on the ground, his legs splayed apart in such a way that he looked as if he'd been stop-framed, running. He was bleeding from the mouth and his eyes were wide open. No, one of his eyes was wide open; the other was half-shut and fluttering. (LL, p.89)

How many things are going to fuck up before we get this straightened out? Did you hear about last night? How many things've been dead already, four? Five? No one knows nothin' anymore, nothin'! (LL, p.90)

'Was the boy laughing before he got hit?'

'Laughing? I don't know what you mean.'

'Laughing. You know, laughing? He was eating that pistachio cone, but was he laughing too?'

She was totally serious. What the hell kind of question was that?

'No, not that I remember.'

'You're sure about that? You're sure that he wasn't laughing?'

'Yes, I guess so. (...) Why is it so important?'

'But he was touching the fence with his hand, right?'

'Yes, he was touching the fence. He was touching the top of it with his free hand.' (LL, p.91)

'Anna, I don't understand some of what's going on here.'

'Like what? You mean what Richard was saying?'

'Yes, what Richard was saying. And then Mrs. Fletcher kept asking me this morning if the Hayden boy was laughing when he got hit by the truck.' (...)

'All right, I'll tell you. Some terrible things have happened in the town in the last six months. A man was electrocuted, a store owner was shot in a holdup, an old woman was blinded last night, and then this thing with the boy today. Galen is Sleepy Town, USA, Thomas. (...) Things just don't happen here.' (...)

'But what did Jordan mean when he said it wasn't supposed to be him?'

'Joe Jordan is Jehovah's Witness. (...) They think that they are the chosen few. God would never let this happen to one of them and besides that, what would you say if you had run over a child and killed it?'

'The boy died?'

'No, but he will.(21) I mean, he probably will, from what I've heard.'

'All right, that makes sense, but then what was Mrs. Fletcher talking about when she asked me if the kid was laughing before he got hit?'

'Goosey Fletcher is Galen's crazy old lady. (...) She was committed to an insane asylum for three years after her husband died.' (LL, pp.103-4)

Before the next scene takes us from the graveyard straight into the basement of the Frances' house, we will stop for a while to reveal the rest of Galen's mystery about which Thomas is not about to learn for a few weeks and Saxony will remain in the dark until her death in the explosion. Tempting as it is to retain some of the novel's suspense in its analysis, it is also necessary to give the secret away here for the sake of the clarity of our discourse - otherwise we wouldn't be able to say much until the very end, save for narrating the story.

Writing his first novel, The Night Races into Anna, Marshall France discovered he possessed some supernatural powers (the ultimate artistic talent, as it were) which manifested themselves in the fact that whatever he wrote down as part of his story would become the reality, literally appearing at his doorstep. Anna explains:

'Do you remember what happens on the last pages of our edition [of The Night Races into Anna]?'

Embarrassed, I said no.

'The old woman, Mrs. Little, dies. But before she does, she tells her three cats to go and stay with her best friend after she's gone.'

I began to remember. 'That's right. And then when she does die, the cats leave her house and walk across the town to her friend's house. They understand everything that's happened.' (...)

'Father wrote that scene the day that Dorothy Lee died. (...) In the book, he changed Dorothy's last name to Mrs. Little. Dorothy Little.'

'He wrote that scene the day she died? Christ, that's a hell of a coincidence.'

'No, Thomas. My father wrote her death. (...) He wrote her death and then an hour later Dorothy's cats came over to tell us, just as he had written. That's how he discovered it.' (LL, pp.171-2)

It probably needs little explanation that such an assumption poses at least one important question: that of free will. France's living characters did not have all the details of their lives written out for them: that would have been impossible(22) - but they did know whom they would marry, who their children would be, what opportunities and what misfortunes they should expect and, most of all, when and how they would die. Nobody could rebel against such determinism, and nobody would: somehow the inhabitants of this Utopian society were happy with the way they lived. As one of the most valuable benefits of their condition they enjoyed safety and confidence in their fate which is not known to any "normal" people around the world.(23) Inquired by Thomas, a Galener explains:

Look, Tom, I'm thirty-nine now, right? I know for sure that I've got twelve more years to go. I never worry about any of that stuff - abut dying and all. But you do, don't you? Sometimes you probably get up in the morning and say to yourself, 'Today might be the day I die, or 'Today I might get crippled or busted up for life.' Things like that. But we never think two seconds about it, you know? I got some arthritis in my hands and I'll die of cancer when I'm fifty-one. So who's better off now, you or me? Be honest. (LL, pp.193-4)

'Let's say that I'm a Galener and I find out that I'm supposed to die tomorrow, that you're going to run me over in your truck. What if I go home and never come out of the house tomorrow. What if I hide in my closet all day and I make it impossible for you to run me over?'

'You'll die in the closet at the same time you were supposed to be run over by me.'(24)

'Do you know what I don't like about what's going on now, Abbey? Not knowin' nothing. I used to be able to walk down the street and not worry about no fuckin' aeroplanes falling on my head. You understand what I'm talking about? When you know, you know. You don't have to worry about nothin' happening to you. Look at this goddamned what's-his-name - Joe Jordan. He goes out to pick up a fucking pack of cigarettes, and the next thing he knows, he's run over by a little kid. No sir, thank you, I want to know when my time's coming. That way, I don't have to worry a bit about it until the time comes.' (...)

The more people I asked, the more it seemed that the vast majority were content with France's 'way,' and horrified that suddenly, cruelly, they had been turned over to the clumsy hands of fate. (LL, p.193)

In the light of what has been said, the hints and meanings buried in the basement scene in Anna France's house will now be apparent in the way they are not and cannot yet be to Thomas and Saxony. The basement is the place where France would begin writing all of his books, sketching simple diagrams of the relations between the characters ("mapping them out") on a school-size blackboard. Anna has not brought Thomas and Saxony there just to introduce them to yet another aspect of her father's life; she actually performs the whole ritual as if to initiate Thomas, a ritual which develops into an undeclared battle (for his soul? his mind? his life?) between her and Saxony:

She wrote 'Dorothy Lee' on the board and then 'Thomas Abbey' under it. She drew arrows from both of our names out to the right. Then she wrote 'The Queen of Oil' next to first, 'Father's Biographer' next to mine. (...) Then under 'Thomas Abbey - Father's Biographer,' she wrote: 'Famous father, English teacher, Clever, Insecure, Hopeful, the Power?' (LL, p.119)

In the prologue, I'd simply describe your father coming down those creaky stairs by himself, turning on the lights, and starting to work on one of the books by doing this thing on the blackboard. The whole first few pages are both the beginning of his book and the beginning of mine. What do you think? (LL, p.120)

You don't really know anything yet, Thomas, and you're already trying to come up with all of these clever little tricks to use (...) If I'm going to let you do this book, you have got to do it carefully and beautifully. Do you know how many terrible biographies I've read that don't even begin to bring their subject back to life, much less make them interesting or intriguing? You cannot imagine how important it is that this book be well done, Thomas. (...) Your book has to have it all, or else he won't... (LL, p.120)

Saxony went to the blackboard, picked up some chalk, and began drawing a cartoon near where our names - Mrs. Lee's and mine - were written. I knew she was a good artist from the sketches I had seen of her puppets, but she outdid herself with this one.

The Queen of Oil - a very good, quick rendering of the famous Van Walt illustration - and I stood over the gravestone of Marshall France. Up above us, France looked down from a cloud and worked puppet strings that were attached to both of us everywhere. (LL, p.121)

In the discussion that follows Thomas remains mostly silent, while Saxony argues with Anna about the attitude with which to approach France's biography and about how much freedom Thomas - the writer - should have in his creation. But it is Thomas who eventually comes up with a satisfying solution: he will write the first chapter all by himself and if Anna does not like his work, he will start anew, closely following her design. Anna agrees to that, but ends her ritual in an ominous way, literally wiping Saxony away from the picture: "'All right.' She picked up the black felt eraser and disappeared Saxony's drawing in two sharp swipes." She does insist, however, on two conditions to be met: the first chapter has to be finished within a month, and

If you are going to do it chronologically... I assume you are? I will give you everything about him until his arrival in America. You won't be covering more than that in your first chapter. (LL, p.123)

Before we move to Part Three of the novel (and to the third chapter of this analysis) we will stop by a few paragraphs that deserve our special attention due to their implications and the light they shed on Carroll's ways of writing. The first of them is a short scene that develops out of Thomas' reflections on the oddities of Galen's little world:

The more we talked [with the lady librarian], the more it seemed that everyone knew everything about everyone in that town: the librarian knew about the test chapter, how much information on France his daughter had given us, and the one-month deadline. But why? Sure, like Anna, the townspeople had a kind of claim on France, since he had spent so much of his life among them, but did Anna tell them everything because of that, or was there some other, more cloudy reason?

A picture flashed across my mind - Anna, naked and tied with leather straps to a bar in someone's basement playroom, being whipped again and again with a bullwhip until she told all of the deadpan Galen faces around her what they wanted to know about Saxony and me.

'Did you give them the train-station postcards too?'

'No, never! Aaugh, yes, yes, I gave him everything!'

Then (this is the same picture), the plywood door explodes and I come flying in with two Bruce Lee kung-fu chains whirling around in my hands like airplane propellers. (LL, p.132)

Another scene worth mentioning is symbolic in a different sense as, together with one that will follow, it adds up to the completeness of Galen's universe. As Thomas will much later learn from Anna, Marshall France did not include afterlife in his Journals - but both heaven and hell can be found among the streets and houses of the town. Heaven comes first, in form of Thomas' favorite shop. It was

a macabre store a couple of steps down from the bus depot.(25) Inside, hundreds of spooky white plaster statues: Apollo, Venus, Michelangelo's David, Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, jockeys holding hitching rings in one outstretched hand. Christmas wreaths waited in ghostlike rows for people to but them. The man who owned the place was an Italian(26) who did all the work in the back of the store and who rarely appeared when you came in to look around. (...) What was so ominous about it was the total whiteness of everything. When you entered the store, it was like stepping into clouds, only here they were John F. Kennedy and crucified-Christ clouds. Saxony hated the place and always went to the drugstore instead to see if any new paperback books had come in. I had vowed to myself that before we left, I would buy something from the guy just because I spent so much time wandering around his joint. Not that there was ever anyone else in there. (LL, p.134)

In case the quoted paragraph was not suggestive enough in the way it evokes celestial associations, it's implications are soon balanced - and enhanced - by another one, more sinister and more significant for the many meanings of the novel - a representation of hell. Before we get there, though, we encounter what amounts to a small essay on two of the major sins: vanity and lust.

From the owner of the heavenly store Thomas receives a gift that Anna France asked to be prepared for him: a "wonderful small statue of the Queen of Oil." Elated and full of expectation he calls Anna to express his thanks and to see if the gift is perhaps a token of Anna's deeper personal interest in him (they aren't lovers yet, but he can't help fantasizing about her). Whether or not it is, Anna does not let him know and he feels

disappointed, to be totally honest. Maybe getting it had created all kinds of Anna-and-me fantasies in my head. Then hearing her brush it off so lightly was a cold shower over everything. (...) What the hell was I doing? I had just that morning been thinking about how nicely my life was going, then two hours later I was slamming phones down because I couldn't fool around with Anna France." (LL, p.135)

I wanted to tell her that I liked her eyes the way they were, but I didn't want to sound like a character out of My Little Margie in front of the druggist. He had a little white name tag on his jacket: Melvin Parker. He reminded me of one of those Mormon missionaries that come to your door preaching the gospel. (LL, p.136)

Since the first moment we met Richard at the forest hut, he appears to be a repulsive character. Says Thomas:

I didn't like Richard Lee. He looked as if he walked around all day in his underpants and took baths on alternate Thursdays. There were golden nuggets of sleep under his eyes, which is the kind of thing that makes me want to reach out and wipe them away. (LL, p.137)

'Hiya, Mel. Hiya, Abbey. Hello, there.' The last was for Saxony. He said it so gallantly that I expected him to tip his baseball cap. I felt a little ping of jealousy. (LL, p.136)

Personally, I never liked catfish. The only reason they're always so fat is that they eat anything. Real garbage fish, you know? That will be two-oh-seven, sir (LL, p.138)

There were crosses on top of crosses. Jesus bled all over the room from fifty different places, each showing him suffering some new kind of agony. The whole house smelled of frying fish and tomatoes. Except for the couch I sat on, which smelled like wet dogs and cigarettes.(27)

Richard brought out his handgun collection, his rifle collection, his fishing-pole collection, and his Indian-head nickel. Sharon brought out a photo album of the family, but most of the pictures were either of dogs they had had through the years or, for some reason, pictures of the family when they were injured. Richard smiling at his leg in thick white cast, Midge merrily pointing to an ugly black eye, Ruth Ann on her back in what was obviously a hospital bed, and in apparent pain. (LL, p.138)

'Did you hear that that Hayden boy that got hit out in front of your place the other day died?' There was no expression on Richard's face when he said it. No concern, no pity. (...)

'How are his parents handling it?'

'They're okay. There's not much you can do about it, you know?' (LL, p.140)

The kitchen door swung open and Sharon came in with a big hot pie on a black metal tray.

Now. This is what I saw, and you can draw your own conclusions. But I did see it. No, Saxony said she didn't. She thought I was crazy when I told her afterward; then she got solicitous when I kept insisting that it was true. It was true.

There is a character in The Green Dog's Sorrow named Krang. Krang is a mad kite that has decided that the win is its enemy. It begs to go up every day so that it can continue its war on its constant battlefield, the sky. (...)

The first thing I saw when Sharon Lee came out of the kitchen was Sharon Lee. I blinked, and when I looked again, I saw Krang coming out of the kitchen holding a hot pie on a black metal tray. The Van Walt illustration: the wide empty eyes that betray the joy in the mouth's full, happy smile. The red cheeks, red lips, circus-yellow skin... At first I thought that it was some kind of remarkable mask that the Lees owned. And I'd thought they were dumb? Anyone who owned a mask like that, much less put it on at that perfect moment, was brilliant. Nutsy-brilliant, but brilliant. It was like a Fellini movie or a funny-bad dream that you don't really want to wake up from even though it's frightening. (LL, p.141)

We have already covered the events that follow until the end of Part Two of the novel. It closes as Thomas realizes that he has arrived at the high point of his life. What has so far been the way up, or toward (coming to Galen in hopeful expectation, the satisfaction that writing the biography brings, the loving relationship with Saxony, the desire for Anna, etc.) will, from the first paragraph of the third part become the way down and "away from":

I had never felt so high and explosive before in my life. Every, every day had twenty different reasons for being there. getting into bed late at night, I could hardly fall asleep - tired as I was - because the thought of tomorrow was so exciting. I loved leading all my different lives - writer, researcher, Anna's lover, Saxony's man. But I knew too that that totally convenient world would end any moment, and that then I might be jumping around as if the floor were on fire, trying to salvage whatever I could. Ask me, though, about the most incredible time of my life, and unquestionably it was those weeks in the fall in Galen before the winter and the death began.(29)