Drinks Before Dinner by E. L. Doctorow Read Free Book Online Page B

realize the world is coming to an end. Andrea, for instance, is quite ready to have the world end. She contemplates the oblivionof us all with a degree of curiosity. So do I. Is there some connection between that feeling and everything we know? Everything being done, all our institutions, all our customs, should be announcing something. And if not just Andrea and I but the masses of people have this crucial perception, and the children with the clearest, most crucial perception of all have this perception, then obviously the way we are living begins to make sense. For what other reason would we all permit ourselves to live and to feel as we live and feel except that we perceive our end? What other reason could we have for giving ourselves over to the industrialization of our being? Why else would we dispose of our community like an idiot smearing his own shit over cars and furniture and fashion clothing and art? I am no longer a person. I am no longer distinguishable from anyone else, nor is anyone distinguishable from me. My acquaintances are arbitrary. I can move as easily among strangers as among friends. I can just as easily know the people I don’t know as the people I do know. I can go anywhere in the country and call people I don’t know by their first names. My most personal tastes and preferences are predicted in market studies that compute my age and color and education and income. I am a function of other things. This is what it means today to be human. And we know that. As we fade in the conviction that we exist and our lives are important, as personhood begins to be given up by men in anticipation of their own oblivion, human character, like a precious resource, is allocated to fewer and fewer individuals. These are political figures and wealthy beautiful people, film stars and TV talk personalities. They hold the proxies for our humanity. The people in the gossip columns and magazines are the appointed human beings for the rest of us. They are designated people with a capital P . Is that not preparing very well for the end? At the same time we relinquish our value toourselves, we can believe everything is as it has been and everything we have believed is still worth believing. In this way we move painlessly to the end. Celebrities become our trusted kin. They live in our television sets. They are more familiar to us than our own families. We are industrialized, like our refrigerators and our cars. We are indistinguishable in our affections from those in the next house. And in this manner we are led painlessly on to the end.
JOEL    Only our friend Edgar could seriously suggest the world is coming to an end because we watch TV.
EDGAR    It is funny that a machine is everywhere transfixing people by the billions. Inside the machine, momentous events are played out, the drama proceeds inexorably to its end. To be followed by another momentous event, another drama. To be followed endlessly by mindlessly momentous events and endless drama. And where we are, outside the machine looking in, there is no drama. There is no drama in our lives because our lives no longer lead to anything. Our crises prove nothing. Our conflicts simply repeat themselves and lead to themselves repeating. Anger is simply anger. Conflict is simply conflict. We are not elevated by it, nor do we learn from it, nor can we avoid repeating it. If our relationships break down, we renew them with others. There are no momentous events. We don’t marry our true loves, we don’t know who they are. If a person dies, he dies. If he dies heroically, who can care? If he dies needlessly, we feel no less sorry. People die needlessly in the thousands and millions. Nothing is done about that. We don’t punish their killers. We don’t assign responsibility for their deaths. That would be drama. People commit great crimes and we have them to dinner. Everything goes on as before.
ALAN    Except tonight, apparently.
JOAN    Yes, Edgar can be