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Saturday, July 31st, 2010

    Time Event
    12:24a
    Hearn, cupping his chin in his handYou know when...
    Hearn, cupping his chin in his handYou know when nothing else is left I'm going to become a fairy, not a goddam little nance, you understand, but a nice upright pillar of the community, live on green lawnsNever a dull moment, man or woman, it's all the same to you, exciting
    Jansen's head lollsNone of your machine-made copulations for meYou know the trouble with Americans is they don't know how to screw, there's no art in our lives, every intellectual has a Babbitt in the closetOh, I like that one, I like itCan it for me, will you, Jansen?
    We're all neurotic
    For a little while it is all quite gloriousThey are wise and aware and sick and the world outside is corrupt and they are the only ones who know itWeltschmertzen, mahogany melancholies, and Weltanschauungen are the only currency
    But it does not always workI'm a phony, Hearn says, and there are times when it goes beyond the flippancy, the easy depression, the almost gratifying self-disgustSometimes there are things which can be done about it
    He broods about this through the summer, has a fight with his father
    I'll tell you, Robert, I don't know where you picked up all this white ceramic chanel watch union idea guff, but if you think they ain't a bunch of gangsters, if you think my men weren't better off depending on me, when Jesus Christ I've helped them out of many a scrape, and Christmas bonuses, Why don't you stay out of this, you don't know what the hell you're talking about
    I resent that, but you never could understand what paternalism is
    Maybe I don't being as it's a big word, but it seems to me it's easy enough to bite the hand that feeds ya
    Well, you don't have to worry about that any more
    But after a further series of supplications and quarrels, he goes back to school early, gets a job washing dishes in the Georgian, and keeps it once classes have startedThere are movements toward reconciliation; Ina comes out to Boston for the first time in three years, and a grudged truce is achievedHe writes home from time to time, but he will not take any money, and junior year is a grind of selling college subscriptions and pressing and laundering contracts to freshmen, odd jobs on weekends, and waiting on tables in the house as a substitute for dishwashingHe likes none of it particularly, but there are new processes discovered, new chanel classic bag sources of strengthHe never really debates the idea of taking money from his parents any longer
    And he feels himself growing older through the year, tougher, wonders at it and picks up no answersMaybe I have my father's stubbornnessThe closest things, the dominant patterns are usually unanswerableHe has lived in a vacuum for eighteen years, cloyed by the representative and unique longings of any youth; he has come into the shattering new world of college and spent two years absorbing, sloughing off shells, putting out feelersAnd inside himself a process, never fully understood, had taken placeA casual fight with his father that has expanded into a rebellion, apparently out of proportion, but it is the sum, he knows, of everything, even of things he has forgotten
    The old friends are still there, still appreciated, but their charm is lessenedIn the daily grind of waiting on tables, doing library work, tutoring clubmen, a certain impatience has developedWords and words, and there are other realities now, a schedule to hold to from necessityHe spends little time at the magazine, frets in some of his classes
    The number seven has a deep chanel cambon purse significance to MannHans Castorp spends seven years on the mountain, and if you will remember the first seven days are given great emphasisMost of the major characters have seven letters in their name, Castorp, Clavdia, Joachim, even Settembrini fulfills it in that the Latin root of his name stands for seven
    The scribbling of notes, the pious acceptanceSir, Hearn asks, what's the importance of that? I mean frankly I found the novel a pompous bore, and I think this seven business is a perfect example of German didacticness, expanding a whim into all kinds of critical claptrap, virtuosity perhaps, but it leaves me unmoved
    His speech causes a minor stir in the class, a polite discussion which the lecturer sums up gently before continuing, but it is a significant impatience for HearnHe would not have said that the preceding year
    There is even a political honeymoon for a monthHe reads some Marx and Lenin, joins the John Reed Society, and argues stubbornly all the time with the members
    I don't see how you can say that about the syndicalists, they've done some damn good work in Spain, and if there can't be a greater co-operation of the elements omega geneve involved
    Hearn, you don't appreciate the issues involvedThere is a history of deep political antagonism between the syndicalists and ourselves, and there has never been a time when it was historically more inappropriate to divert the masses with an unattainable and uncoordinated utopiaIf you would take the trouble to study the revolution, you would realize that the anarchists have a record of sensuality and political debauch in times of stress, and tend to assume a feudal discipline with terrorist leadersWhy don't you study the career of Batko Makhno in 1919? Do you realize even Kropotkin was so repelled by the anarchist excesses that he took no stand in the revolution?
    Should we lose the war in Spain, then?
    What if it is won by the wrong elements on our side who will be unaffiliated with Russia? How long do you assume they would last with the Fascist pressures present in Europe today?
    That's a little too farsighted for meHe stares around the dormitory room, at the seven members spread out over the couch, the floor, and the two worn chairsIt seems to me you just do the thing that seems best at the moment, and worry about the rest of it gucci horsebit hobo lat

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