Page 171

By Jack Joseph Smith

Well I am sure as shit going to have one. How about you Murf? Those fucking cunt, he said, swigging from the bottle. Let's hit a club. You're out of your mind. Downtown. Maybe a piece of ass. He he. Don't want to come. Eah. Jagg off. Where is knowledge? There is none. How many times do I have to tell you that? We don't see anything; we only remember what we have left behind. Why do you think they let Murf go. Jagg off. Because I remembered that this is Mount Lebanon, and the cops don't want trouble from the womens club. The cops knew what I was doing, when I called the broads whores. There was no knowledge. We were vying for power on the same level of whatever you want to call it. Awareness. Ass hole. Good old Dandy. In any event, Murf wouldn't be out, if for a second it would have seemed that I knew more than they did. So what good does it do to get Murf out, if you go on lying to yourself and to them. Be realistic, for Christ sake. Wait a minute. That's not what I mean. What good our your actions, if each time over, you must begin again in the same place? What fucking place? Don't you understand, that you must go beyond the point you begin with, or you haven't gone anywhere? Your taking in fucking circles Michael. I am talking about getting Murf out of jail.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Michael says they can go beyond the recurring jail even if they keep moving through their separate journeys, but O'Dandy answers that every man's pain is the same little box in the gut and treats everything else as horse shit and self-pity.

This is one of the clearest clashes between them: Michael insists on degrees of agony and awareness, while Dandy flattens all experience into the same bodily fact. The argument matters because it shows that O'Dandy's toughness is also a philosophy of refusal.

Claude

Refusing the bottle while Murphy swigs and curses the girls, the narrator asks 'Where is knowledge?' and O'Dandy answers with his epistemology of pure memory: 'There is none... We don't see anything; / we only remember what we have left behind.' He explains freeing Murphy as cold calculation - the cops fear 'trouble / from the womens club,' and calling the girls whores was just 'vying for power on the same level,' which the narrator names 'Awareness' and O'Dandy bats away as 'Ass hole.' Their deeper split surfaces in the narrator's circular insistence - 'you must go beyond the point you begin with, or you haven't / gone anywhere' - against O'Dandy's flat practicality, 'I am talking about getting Murf out of jail.'