Chapter V

Desert Hearts (1985)

"What had her whole life been but an effort toward completeness and perfection?"

Paper Moon (1973)

"What had taken place in her above all was that a long resentment had ripened. She hated the effacement to which English usage reduced the widowed mother; she had discoursed of it passionately to Fleda; contrasted it with the beautiful homage paid by other countries to women in that position, women no better than herself, whom she had seen acclaimed and enthroned, whom she had known and envied; made in short as little as possible a secret of the injury, the bitterness she found in it. The great wrong Owen had done her was not his 'taking up' with Mona--that was disgusting, but it was a detail, an accidental form; it was his failure from the first to understand what it was to have a mother at all, to appreciate the beauty and sanctity of the character. She was just his mother as his nose was just his nose, and he had never had the least imagination or tenderness or gallantry about her."

"With such a mother to give him the pitch how could he take it so low?"

The Spoils of Poynton, Henry James

showtime

Age of Summerhood (2013)

"Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous play. From in front, the stupid lines and grotesque situations would have made him squirm with annoyance, but because he saw the perspiring stagehands and the wires that held up the tawdry summerhouse with its tangle of paper flowers, he accepted everything and was anxious for it to succeed."

The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West

Sherman's "On the March"

Morning sun! Stiff brim!
On the county courthouse steps,
the beat reporter

waits for the story.
Sits down and dries out his flask.
Fingers his brim limp.

In court, on trial,
the bait from Park Avenue
pleads, "I'm so sorry!"