J R (American Literature)

by William Gaddis

sight beyond the firehouse and the crumbling plaza of the Marine Memorial behind him as he turned up the highway and crossed, stepping over ruts, tripping against cragged remnants of sidewalk in block lengths allotted by rusted poles still bearing aboveground indecipherable relics of street signs that had signaled a Venetian bent real estate extravaganza in the twenties, until even those limbs of rust lay twisted to earth and naked of any sign of place, of any suggestion of the tumbled column and decollated plaster Lion of St Mark’s moldered smooth there in the high browned grass where he turned in, any memory at all but these weeds recalled by the aged as Queen Anne’s laces lining ruts which led back into the banks of oak, no cars but those seeking seclusion for the dumping of outmoded appliances, fornication, and occasional suicide, and those far fewer and on foot who knew it for a back entrance to the Bast property.