Page 120
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The bar talk circles illusion, religion, and outcast identity, making drunken argument sound like a rough theology of the street.
Animal keeps turning casual conversation into metaphysical provocation, while the Cornel answers from a more grounded code of hospitality and experience. The page works because neither view fully defeats the other: mirage, laughter, religion, food, and barroom generosity all become parts of the same argument.
Animal insists 'There's a mirage here Cornel; And it is spreading', that they are 'dutybound to keep our minds above the illusion', while the Cornel answers from plain hospitality: 'There is no illusion Animal; just sit right down here'. The barman who 'had fought with death forever' rates 'jail jokes' best, Animal jokes that 'Wall Street eats nothing but kosher corn beef', and his head buzzes toward a plan to 'drink untill midnight' then walk under 'that sliver moon'. The exchange sharpens to the page's central riddle - 'all the laughing outcasts still believe in the head monk' - and the Cornel turns it back: 'you are a laughing out-cast arn't you Animal?'