Agape Agape by William Gaddis Read Free Book Online Page A

everything collapses and it’s all swallowed up by lawyers and taxes like everything else because that’s what it’s about the collapse of everything of, of, I can’t even go into it you see that’s what I have to go into before all my ideas are stolen before I get them written down before my work is distorted misunderstood turned into a cartoon and, towel here in this mess somewhere sheet’s cold and wet dry my leg before I start to rust, back of my hand all these little criss-crosses looks like broiled bluefish but, a little music. Music, that’s really where it all starts and ends next time I see a human being I’ll ask for a little music here not just for pleasure no, look for those notes on Nietzsche’s Apollinian measured beauty in this heap somewhere but that’s not what it’s about no, it’s this detachable self or soul being tormented in Hades or this guilt Empedocles gets from Pythagoras’ school of recollection, training your memory to recollect sins and sufferings of your previous life in his terrifying catechism we came here to be punished and we ought to be punished, because good God! You find it wherever you look, the body as a prison and there’s the rabbinical student dying of love for a woman engaged to somebody else so his spirit inhabits her body, slips in when she’s asleep and her body’s unoccupied and the rabbi comes in to exorcise this dybbuk, who may be having a grand time in there. This guilt, guilt, guilt step in it wherever you go in this pile somewhere, what was I looking for, these pages on Tolstoy no I put those under here with some broken, with this training your mind to recollect sins in a previous life to these cases today of recovered memory, same thing isn’t it? Satanism and cannibalism and rape under the guidance of your psychotherapist, abuse and abortions and alien abductions with the help of your church counselor and these vivid fake memories of satanic cults where they practiced cannibalism and the poor woman is told to bring the meat in and they’ll get it analyzed for human protein but I mean where did this Satan come from in the first place? Read them the script the crazier the better when the angel bursts in on this madman banished to a cave in the Aegean, saying with the voice of a trumpet What thou seest, write in a book, and goes on to dictate a scenario breathing fire and earthquake, the stars falling, the sun turning black and the sea turning to blood in that overwhelming vision of total insanity called the Revelation of St. John the Divine nearer to thee, dear God! Nearer to thee, and what do you say of the choral art and of dithyrambic poetry? Invented to give pleasure to the multitude aren’t they? Talk about avoiding stress little cup here somewhere with pills in it, my head is splitting, just stop shivering, if I can just stop shivering, find a pencil here and get back to work if I can just stop shivering, now where was I, where was that. Flutes and kettledrums in the Corybantic and Dionysiac cures for phobias and anxiety breaking down and weeping, hearts beating like like, like the kettledrums dancing out of their minds in their morbid mental no, no it’s getting too close can’t dance can’t even stand up that’s the other can’t, can’t breathe just, just try to, put these back in this pile try to, to avoid stress get my breath and get back to work here’s the voice of the mob the steam calliope getting closer hear it two miles away and the, wait. Wait yes here it is, what I was looking for not even 1910 yet, 1905, 1900 the automatic piano roll changer plays six five-tune rolls, look at it! Almost eight feet high weighs 1500 pounds the Wurlitzer Orchestra piano with mandolin attachment, 38 violin pipes, 36 flute pipes, set of orchestra bells bass and snare drums and a triangle as though Plato had written the prescription for this pandemonium yes, yes his comments on