Page 171
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
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.
Michael presses O'Dandy: the cops did not want trouble on the women's club, you were lying on the same level, that is not awareness; O'Dandy counters that Murphy would not be out if Dandy seemed to know more than the cops did.