Page 146

By Jack Joseph Smith

~ ~ a ‘ 148 Do you remember O'Neill? Yeah, I remember the fairy, : He is not a fairy Dendy? He is a very educated young man} Eah;' What about hing You recall your chess game with him last week? Yeah, the ass hole couldn'+ play in his head worth a shits Okey Dandy, we know your a good chess player, but that's not what I'm getting até Then get at its i Now,mjust a second Dandy; We are going to do a little playacting, I'll be O'Neill, and you play yourself; Doryou think that will be difficult? Do I think what will be- difficult? Well'to play yourself, That would be difficult for mez So I am just assuming it would be difficult for yous : Your quite a character you lnows I lmow what you means; you jagg offs’ { Do you remember your conversation about the King} He he, he laugheds Yeah, I remember it; : Okey, for the benefit of all the nice young people here today, of Dendy and I present : the conversation about the Kings. : , Okey, I begin the scene taking the-part of O'Neills : Where is the ass-hole from anyway? si He is from Californias Your trying to get out of this Dandy; 4 I should have figured, Californias Bah; 4 Okey’, lets get into the scenes

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

Back among the drinkers, the narrator and O'Dandy slip into a crude little piece of playacting about O'Neill, chess, California, and a conversation about the King, turning the picnic crowd into an audience.

Performance has become a reflex here, a way to seize the scene before someone else does. The mock dialogue is sloppy and comic, but it also shows the narrator testing out the power to turn even these drunken men into characters.

Claude

Back at the picnic the running dialogue tries out a stage scene about O'Neill playing the part of O'Neill while O'Dandy plays himself and Sabastian keeps insisting his word of choice is fucking — a chapter now on explicit theatre-within-theatre.