The Gallery (New York Review Books Classics)

by John Horne Burns

Therefore their energies turned inward: to the enjoyment

a human being. That’s not impossible, you know. — Nah, the mess sergeant said. They wanted

gaiety, a simplicity, and a resignation that touched me and many other Americans. This even though they’d lost their war. The fact remained that these

can be, uncomplicated by advertising and Puritanism and those loathsome values of a civilization in which everything is measured in terms of commercial success. What difference does it make if a man has BO

machinery. I don’t speak as a romanticist. What complicates human life unbearably is

People aren’t born equal intellectually. But that’s a truism. All have a

themselves and too little cognizant of their responsibilities. By August, 1944, they’d failed completely. It was time for a new order and straight thinking. The alternative was obvious.

For in Naples I and other Americans learned by a simple application of synecdoche that no one, in himself and by himself, is much better

cipher which is the beginning of wisdom

For I got lost in the war in Naples in August, 1944. Often from what I saw

is the reason why I remember the Gallery in Naples. Italy. . . .

must tell me what you know that I do not. I must learn your secret. Is it just that you are an American? . . . I think not. I find many of them

will never be what I thought it could be. I used to dream at the wheel of my taxi

somehow survived the passion and coherence of an old faith.

He was trembling. His loins vibrated with something fiercer and more durable than the excitement of love. For Moe saw that he hadn’t so much time left, that the sweetness was dribbling away from him as from a broken jelly jar.

are like us. We just have to find what not to put our faith in. Most of the people who try to tell us what to do are wrong. . . . Look, you and I are together tonight. We’re happier than most of the

could have. Her hair fell into his closed eyes. He raised his arms and twined them about her shoulders, where the black silk soothed his fingers — the good ones

things that go on in a war — I can’t see this crap about war criminals — we do all right at the game too once we get started — the only thing that’s safe from

and mail it home as a souvenir to their folks — pictures — jewelry

all lost our souls —

pricked by the toothpick in his

but now . . . not yesterday

But all the people in the Galleria were human beings in the middle of a war. They

1944. They were all in Naples, where something in