In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories
Delmore Schwartz
Language: English
Pages: 1
ISBN: 0811206807
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Book by Schwartz, Delmore
Meaning of This Life,” Schwartz produced a vivid, if unsparing portrait of his own childhood. The story of the Hart family’s faded expectations — the promising uncle who died young; his brother’s compulsive gambling; the clashes between Sarah Hart and her husband (Schwartz’s parents); her sister’s marriage late in life — was entirely autobiographical. Schwartz’s portrait of his mother as “suspicious, rejected, ambitious to win more than most human beings desired,”
suppositions or assumptions on the basis of an engraved card,” said Ferdinand. “This is stupendous,” said Edmund, for he saw that Ferdinand had a trump card up his sleeve. “The fact is that I am not married,” Ferdinand declared. “It is possible that I may marry Irene in the near future, but at present we are merely very good friends who have decided to live together.” Marcus capsized on the sofa. His dismay spread over his face as if he were at the
console her. Hence, Sarah made a habit of bringing the infant in his baby carriage to her mother’s house. The little boy, who had been named after his grandfather, was rocked, fed, and diapered in front of his grandmother, who paid no attention to him, although his birth had pleased and excited her six months before Leonard’s death. Sarah told her mother of the advice of friends of the family, for she was always one to suppose that explanation was the proper means of
hoot. “Why don’t you go home,” said one. “Call a cop,” said another. Cornelius stepped forth and said, painstakingly, “Can’t you see that the fact that two cards have the same blur on them proves nothing. It may be a 1 in both cases. You are permitting yourselves to be deceived.” But the audience had decided once and for all. It was now intent upon going on with the game and then on with the show, and answered Cornelius by hoots and whistles. The ushers
between the generations that helps to make this story so rich a portrait of immigrant life. . . . He reflected upon his separation from these people [the immigrant Jews], and he felt that in every sense he was removed from them by thousands of miles, or by a generation . . . whatever he wrote as an author did not enter into the lives of these people, who should have been his genuine relatives and friends, for he had been surrounded by their lives since the day