Page 147
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Leaving Thomas on the hill and returning to an afternoon of drinking, grass, Beaver, Wendell Sabastian, and Lincoln-bum talk, the narrator keeps mocking O'Dandy and the others with bows, lines from plays, and showy little gestures that sharpen the heckling against him.
The picnic settles back into its usual disorder, but now artifice is being used almost like a blade. He enjoys making O'Dandy's crowd feel stupid, and the theatrical flourishes become another form of domination and self-display.
Thomas cuts loose — you pretty fast / you're pretty big — and Michael jogs back up the hill to find Wendell Sabastian introduced as a Lincoln-bums ghost and O'Dandy seething that Frost is nothing but a fucking phony.