Page 175
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Chapter X opens at a theatrical party where a yellow-dressed director moves through vodka, beer, props, costumes, and cultivated mischief while Michael watches himself perform beside the rich girl and remembers O'Dandy's absent company.
The page shifts from the street and jail cycle into a more artistic social theatre, but the same instability remains. Michael sees the party as performance, escape, and self-display, with the rich girl already bent under the sadness he notices beside him.
Chapter X opens at the lady director's party, the blond 'lady director and writer' in a 'yellowdress' dancing through a room of curtseying men, her 'marvellous childrens theatre' and the narrator cast as 'the actor who / was going off to adventures on the long lonesome road.' He reads the theatre crowd as 'A sefistecated carnival' of 'long-hair and mustaches and bright colored hats' touring 'A bus or tow or three or four' that 'were always breaking down,' a cart of props bearing 'the faces / of comedy and tragedy.' On his arm the rich girl is 'a priceless gem... Pretending to be unhurt; pretending not to be / bending to the tears,' while he watches the 'painted intellects' risk becoming 'tissue paper people,' their personalities 'flung around the room, like forest leaves,' and notes that here 'power didn't seem to have much to' do with anything - remembering the absent O'Dandy.