Manhattan Beach

by Jennifer Egan

We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible.”

Men ran the world, and they wanted to fuck the women. Men said “Girls are weak” when in fact girls made them weak.

No one talked more than men on ships, but the point of the stories they told was to hide the ones they could never divulge to anyone.

“We all pay for our advantages,” the old man said, with meaning. “There’s not a man in this world who hasn’t, and I include the priests.

“Not enough has been written about the treachery of middle life,” the old man mused, his voice carrying over the wind. “Dante went to hell to escape it, and I’ve seen plenty of other men do the same, metaphorically speaking. Be patient, Dexter. Wars have a way of shifting the terrain into configurations we can’t foresee, hard as we might try. This is no time for bold moves.”