Page 141
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A new chapter opens under a handwritten note about book writers beneath the soil, then moves into dancing and singing as the narrator passes through late-summer Greek, Polish, Lithuanian, and Italian picnics, soccer fields, bourbon, folk music, and smiling girls while leaving his father's business and keeping the rich girl near him.
The mood swings outward after the solitary dawn walk, and for a moment the world feels festive, bodily, and communal. Even so, the line about the game already begun suggests that escape, role-playing, and self-invention are quietly organizing the pleasure.
Chapter IX opens under a note about figures 'To be introduced in various areas of the book' - 'Book writers beneath the soil' - then bursts into release: 'It was time for me to dance... it was time for singing,' a 'march without drums' to chase 'the illusive and forgotton dreams of book writers lying / beneath the soil.' The chapter pours into late-summer ethnic picnics - Greek, Polish, Lithuanian, Italian - sparkling wine, straight bourbon, 'girls of rainbow loveliness,' and Saturday soccer on the Hungarian field, all walked through 'with a beard and tennis shoes,' unaware 'of the / game I had begun' after telling his father no business career 'could ever be a part of me' while still keeping the rich girl 'clinging at my side.'