Page 276

By Jack Joseph Smith

And she came as the sleekness said your lying and I laughed and said that would be fine but I am not one who lies for there is no meaning in doing it while he was saying you can't act uppper middle class and be cool in this kind of place at the same time and I replied that when I was his age I wanted to be old And he did not know what I ment and she came inbetween and asked me how I was going to leave When the last train was coming and my friend was in the back collecting his winnings Stricking eyes sudenly as silence with sound in the backround I said L.A. I'm leaving and He said It's only five miles

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page stages a barroom exchange about lying, class performance, leaving, winnings, and the absurd closeness of Los Angeles.

The scene turns on edited speech and social posing. The crossed-out insult, the upper-middle-class line, and the final five-mile joke all make departure feel both dramatic and strangely local.

Claude

A barroom scene rendered as one breathless run-on of reported speech. A man accuses the speaker of 'lying'; he laughs and answers 'I am / not one who lies for there is no / meaning in doing it,' while the man insists 'you can't act uppper middle class and / be cool in this kind of place at the same time' (source spelling uppper). The speaker deflects with a strange line about age - 'when I was his age I / wanted to be old' - and 'he did not know what I ment.' A woman arrives 'inbetween,' asking how he will leave on 'the last train' while his friend is 'in the back collecting his winnings.' It ends on a deadpan exchange about departure shrunk to nothing: 'I said L.A. I'm leaving / and He said It's only five miles.' This reading stays provisional: the page is mixed-quality with a struck typed phrase and oversized marginal handwriting (e.g. 'God Everybody') that was noted but not placed.