"Oh, Clara, interrupt me"

Clara nodded. “It seems incredible. A man of such talent. How could anyone so well-endowed be so self-destructive? It’s hard to believe.”

 

“Nonsense. You know better.” Arthur’s eyes were dry now, and his voice had regained its crisp, thrusting tone. “It’s the rule, not the exception. Thoreau was right – all men’s lives are failures. Oh, not yours. Maybe not mine. You do honest work. You serve life. But look at all the brilliant talents who’ve drunk themselves to death, or thrown away the work they were best at doing, or thrown away their energy on false crusades and called their means of self-destruction a sign of superiority. Larry did, almost to the end. Or how many take the opposite way out, like your parents, shut down and closed up, cringing to death? Why? Are they too afraid to live? Or too proud? Who knows? But it’s the rule, not the exception. Larry’s suicide was only more dramatic than most. Of all the seed, of all the fetuses, of all the infants, all the children, all the men and women … how few survive each stage and grow to the next, and how few of that few survive. Only a few, a tiny few beneficiaries of the right combination of genes and circumstances and decisions survive to become human beings. And of those few – oh, Clara, interrupt me, don’t let me go on ranting.”

 

Clara took his hand. “You need to grieve.”

 

“Not now. Enough for now. Don’t let me keep up this self-pitying, maundering – talk about something else. How’s your love life? Are you going to marry that nice boy, what’s his name? And is he old enough to vote yet?”

 

-– from Dorothy Bryant, A Day in San Francisco, pp. 70-71.

__________

 

Leo Strauss always used to insist that we mustn’t confuse the opinions of a character for the opinions of the author. So maybe Dorothy Bryant herself doesn’t believe this. More importantly, maybe it’s not true. Maybe.