Page 173

By Jack Joseph Smith

Pacing across his shack he stopped; His feet and mind were suddenly there on the floor and in the sented air. He looked back on his portrayal of the gun. (If this guy wants to be the bank president, if this guy will be the bank president, then I better be Jessie James.) He had studied them and an immag-- ination hell bent on convincing before he had st- ood up to leave. At the door he had turned; "O.K. this is a gun!" His right hand raised slowly with a loose gun; as if it were the weight and not the bullets he were measuring in the thirty-eight empty; from his hand. He returned acroos the room, his finger pointing ahead and toward the group of men. The eyes ment that he had made it into the invisable circular wall respected beyond their reproach. He stopped there in his rememberence too and said, "I could blow your brains out, you know that don't you!" He had waited a moment, had let his arm fall, and begun to walk out in the strut of a dope deal stolen back. At the door he turned again: "After all; I did come here to act." The words; "will give you a call;" were with him as he walked out his own door, and into a patio of

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Jiven Joe replays the audition as a gun scene, turning humiliation into a private gangster performance that lets him briefly reclaim power.

The page is compensatory theatre, but not empty theatre. He needs the imagined gun, the line at the door, and the remembered exit in order to reverse the power of the meeting and return to his own life with some charge left.

Claude

Jiven Joe recasts the boardroom defeat as a role: 'If this guy will be the bank president, then I better be Jessie James.' His remembered exit becomes performance - 'O.K. this is a gun!', raising 'a loose gun' as though weighing 'the weight and not the bullets' of 'the thirty-eight empty', the men's eyes ceding him 'the invisable circular wall respected beyond their reproach'. He delivers 'I could blow your brains out, you know that don't you!' then walks 'in the strut of a dope deal stolen back', tossing off 'After all; I did come here to act'. The hollow 'will give you a call' follows him out the door - bravado answered by indifference. This reading remains provisional because the page transcript is OCR-uncertain and handwriting still needs closer review.