Page 264
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page reads like a self-exhortation to Animal, urging him to keep running and keep making himself outside family authority, advertising, and borrowed language.
Once the Wurlitzer header is stripped away, the voice becomes much clearer. The beach, tide, moonlight, and private pep-talk combine into a manifesto of solitary persistence and self-invention.
A voice strips Animal down to solitude - 'Now you will have no father, no uncle either. Where is your brown paper bag? Even it is gone' - and orders 'Run on. Now you are at the height of a fame that is your own.' He moves under the Pier on a black sea, 'the moon was hegh over the boards,' choosing to 'listen instead' of think, sure that 'Wine was as good as Acid in your brain.' The pep-talk is a manifesto of self-invention against family and advertising - 'You don't need advertising for this trip... The beach is still nature' - ending as 'A long wave wipped itself away and he ran on through it's spread out water.'