Desperate Characters
Paula Fox
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 0393351106
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"A towering landmark of postwar Realism. . . . A sustained work of prose so lucid and fine it seems less written than carved." ― David Foster Wallace
Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage―and a society―wrenching itself apart.
First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature ― a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Seize the Day."
don’t mean he’s hard—has an absolutely impenetrable surface, although he appears to have none at all. He doesn’t take me in, yet I like him. He makes me feel cheerful.” It was, for Otto, a very long dissertation. Sophie looked at him in surprise. He handed her the program he’d just been given by an usher who was, at the moment, gesturing impatiently at their seats. They edged past two men wearing embroidered silk vests and turned down the seats. “I’ve never heard you go on so about anyone,” she
Charlie wants that.” He left then, quite suddenly, shutting the door on her good-bye. She was startled at his words. “A new life.” It was one of those melancholy asides people of a certain age were given to. But not Otto. She wondered if Charlie would try to see Otto today and thought not. With no special sense of how she had arrived at such a conclusion, she was now sure that Charlie did not really want to confront Otto; he was like the stage character who shouts “Let me at him” at a safe
examined it,” he said. “They don’t keep it—well, I know it would be after they examined it, Otto. I mean, do they keep it for a week or a day or two, in case someone might take it?” “That old brute? Who would take it?” “Can you stay home tomorrow until noon?” “Why do you persist in thinking they’re going to call you?” “There’s always a chance they might.” “All right, then!” he exploded angrily. “Then you’ll have the shots, fourteen of them, and they’ll hurt, and possibly, they won’t even
Then she walked quickly to the dining room, feeling a sudden intense desire for more sunlight, for signs of life in the windows across the yard. A book lay open on the dining room table, a red pencil separating its pages. A cup stood next to it, and in the cup was a wilted slice of lemon. Otto must have come down to read during the night. Before or after he’d jumped her? she wondered, reminding herself she’d been maltreated but not feeling so. The small still life echoing Otto’s presence filled
parking space, and although Sophie did not feel up to walking—she was vaguely nauseated—she didn’t want to insist on being driven. Otto would think the cat bite had affected her more than it really had. It was usually more costly to make a fool of oneself, she thought. Her fatuity had deserved at least a small puncture. “Why do they drop everything on the pavement?” Otto asked angrily. “It’s the packaging. Wrapping frenzy.” “It’s simple provocation. I watched a colored man kick over a trash