Page 146

By Jack Joseph Smith

Do you remember O'Neill? Yeah, I remember the fairy. He is not a fairy Dandy? He is a very educated young man. Eah. What about him? You recall your chess game with him last week? Yeah, the ass hole couldn't play in his head worth a shit. Okey Dandy, we know your a good chess player, but that's not what I'm getting at. Then get at it. Now, just a second Dandy. We are going to do a little playacting. I'll be O'Neill, and you play yourself. Do you think that will be difficult? Do I think what will be difficult? Well to play yourself. That would be difficult for me. So I am just assuming it would be difficult for you. Eah. Your quite a character you know. I know what you mean, you jagg off. Do you remember your conversation about the King? He he, he laughed. Yeah, I remember it. Okey, for the benefit of all the nice young people here today, O'Dandy and I present the conversation about the King. Okey, I begin the scene taking the part of O'Neill. Where is the ass hole from anyway? He is from California. Your trying to get out of this Dandy. I should have figured. California. Eah. Okey, lets get into the scene.

Original Scan

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

The narrator stage-manages a 'little playacting' for the picnic crowd, casting himself as the absent O'Neill and assigning O'Dandy the harder role of playing himself - 'That would be difficult for me. So I am just assuming it / would be difficult for you.' He sets up a re-enactment of 'the conversation about the King,' pinning down that O'Neill 'is a very educated young man' from California while O'Dandy, who dismisses him as 'the fairy' who 'couldn't play in his head worth a shit,' keeps stalling with his flat 'Eah.' Theatre is wielded here as a needling instrument of control over the drunk men.