The World Cannot Give

by Tara Isabella Burton

Robert’s still trapped in what Webster keeps calling the whole sclerotic modern world, where nothing means anything, where everything Great or Pure or World-Historical (Webster’s styling; only now Laura uses it too) that was ever going to happen has happened already, long ago, where nobody’s soul ever gets dashed on rocks.

She wonders if you can have a shipwreck of the soul in a place like Henderson, Nevada, or in a time like the present, or if you have to be lucky enough to live in a place and a time where people are fighting World-Historical battles you can die in. She wonders if you can have a shipwreck without dying.

At first, she chalks it up to Reverend Tipton’s twitchy British exasperation, which renders him harassed by human beings in general.

although she knows, she knows, that maybe everybody deserves to die,