Here is a crowd
around a broken automobile. The broken automobile has trapped them,
betrayed them. They realize the broken automobile as a "practical" excuse
to stop walking, to stop moving, to stop going anywhere or being anybody.
Their serious concentration on the broken wheel enables them to pretend
that they are logically interested in practical matters. Without which
pretense it would be impossible for them to exist. Without which pretense
they would become consciously dead. They must always seem, to themselves
as well as to others, logically interested in something. Yes, always
something.
But the plot is--and do not misunderstand this, he cautions--that the
pretense here around the broken automobile grows shallow enough to plumb.
There is nothing here. Two dozen men standing dead on a curbing, tricked
into confessional by a little accident.
So I will begin a book tomorrow, he says, and empties his pipe as he
talks, which will have to do with the make-believe of people in
streets--the make-believe of being alive and being somebody and going
somewhere.
And saying this, this garrulous one walks off with a high whistle on his
lips and a grave triumph sitting on his shoulders.
JAZZ BAND IMPRESSIONS
The trombone player has a straight part.
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