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My only brother, eight years older than I, is a successful scientist. His special field is physics as it relates to clouds. His name is Bernard, and he is funnier than I am. I remember a letter he wrote after his first child, Peter, was born and brought home. "Here I am," that letter began, "cleaning shit off of practically everything."
And I realize now that the two main themes of my novels were stated by my siblings: "Here I am cleaning shit off of practically everything" and "No pain." The contents of this book are samples of work I sold in order to finance the writing of the novels. Here
I asked him what the very lowest grade of fiction was, and he told me, "Science fiction." I asked where he was bound in such a rush, and learned that he had to catch a Fan-Jet. He was to speak at a meeting of the Modern Language Association in Honolulu the next morning. Honolulu was three thousand miles away.
the only thing I’d ever directed before was the installation of combination aluminum storm windows and screens I’d sold. That’s what I am, a salesman of storm windows and doors, and
Kilgore Trout.
"That’s life, I guess—twenty Blanches to one Stella."
There was a Howard Johnson’s next door to every Ethical Suicide Parlor, and vice versa. The Howard Johnson’s had an orange roof and the Suicide Parlor had a purple roof, but they were both the Government. Practically everything was the Government.
On the green cement, in front of the ancient frame houses, were statues representing the fourteen Kennedys who had been Presidents of the United States or the World.
"If you dare to think about it now, you’ll realize that you’re angry because I’m such a bad lover, and a funny-looking shrimp besides.
She was surrounded by underwear and socks to be mended, and Herbert said her name was Alma, which seemed entirely possible.
Prescriptive, as nearly as I could tell, was like an honest cop, and descriptive was like a boozed-up war buddy from Mobile, Ala.
I admit I know next to nothing about international politics, but it seems reasonable to suppose that nobody would want to fight wars if there were enough of everything to go around.
When Bud and Charlene were about eight, why I came home one night with a fish bowl and two goldfish. There was one goldfish for each twin, only it was impossible to tell one fish from the other one. They were exactly alike. So one morning Bud got up early, and there was one goldfish floating on top of the water dead. So Bud went and woke up Charlene, and he said, "Hey, Charlene—your goldfish just died."
"There are too many of us, and we are all too far apart,"
