From the new preface to In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, by William H. Gass, a book recommended to me in the spring, searched for in used bookstores for months after, and found, tonight, on a table in the Strand, just when I’d forgotten all about it:
Perhaps it is the case with many fabrications, but I am struck by how easily they might not have been at all; how really unreasonably provisional their entire existence is. The same for us all, you say? aren’t we accidents of genes and conditions of acidity ourselves, of elemental woove and wovvle? the product of opportunity and inclination, simple negligence and malice? Yes. O. Yes. Of course. But we burgeon as easily as water falls. We grow meanly like a cancer. Wasted acres testify to the undiminished requirements of our needs. Suppose it were otherwise, and a mother had to make her child’s every cell. How many of us, in that case, would reach complete existence?