by Kurt Vonnegut

As close as Vonnegut will ever get to a memior

145 pages

Beginning:

“As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation,” (1)

Somewhere in the middle:

“I really don’t know what I’m going to become from now on. I’m simply along for the ride to see what happens to this body and this brain of mine. I’m startled that I became a writer. I don’t think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don’t have that feeling. I don’t have that sort of control. I’m simply becoming.

All I really wanted to do was give people the relief of laughing. Humor can be a relief, like an aspirin tablet. If a hundred years from now people are still laughing, I’d certainly be pleased,” (130).

End:

“Okay?” (145).

by Elie Wiesel

Novel

112 pages

Beginning:

“They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname,” (3).

Somewhere in the middle, I began to weep:

“The darkness eveloped us. All i could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again.

I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men.

I don’t know how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse,” (95).

End:

“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.

The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me,” (115).

by Aimé Césaire

Play

59 pages

Beginning:

“MASTER OF CEREMONIES: Come, gentlemen, help yourselves. To each his character, to each character his mask. You, Prospero? Why not? He has reserves of willpower he’s not even aware of himself. You want Caliban? Well, that’s revealing. Ariel? Fine with me. And what about Stephano, Trinculo? No takers? Ah, just in time! It takes all kinds to make a world.

And after all, they aren’t the worst of characters,” (7).

Somewhere in the middle:

“ARIEL: It’s evil to play with their hunger as you do with their anxieties and their hopes.

PROSPERO: That is how power is measured. I am Power,” (32).

End:

“CALIBAN: FREEDOM HI-DAY!  FREEDOM HI -DAY!” (66).

by Nathanael West

Novel

58 pages

Beginning:

“The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard,” (1).

Somewhere in the middle:

“The whisky was good and he felt warm and sure. Through the light-blue tobacco smoke, the mahogany bar shone like wet gold. The glasses and bottles, their high lights exploding, rand like a battery of little bells when the bartender touched them together,” (15).

End:

“The cripple turned to escape, but he was too close and Miss Lonelyhearts caught him.

While they were struggling, Betty came in through the street door.  She called to them to stop and started up the stairs.  The cripple saw her cutting off his escape and tried to get rid of the package.  He pulled his hand out.  The gun inside the package exploded and Miss Lonelyhearts fell, dragging the cripple with him.  They both rolled part of the way down the stairs,” (58).

Novel

165 pages

Beginning:

“The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was a small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, and said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-clearning!’ and blolted our of the house without even waiting to put on his coat,” (7).

Somewhere in the middle:

“Those were golden days and balmy nights! In and out of the harbour all the time—old friends everywhere—sleeping in some cool temple or ruined cistern during the heat of the day—feasting and song after sundown, under great stars set in a velvet sky! Thence we turned and coasted up the Adriatic, its shores swimming in an atmosphere of amber, rose, and aquamarine; we lay in wide land-locked harbours, we roamed through ancient and noble cities, until at last one morning as the sun rose royally behind us, we rode into Venice down a path of gold,” (111).

End:

“This was a base libel on Badger, who, though he cared little about Society, was rather fond of children; but it never failed to have its full effect,” (165).

by Marsha Norman

Drama, One Act

89 pages

Beginning:

Mama: Jessie, it’s the last snowball, sugar. Put it on the list, O.K.? And we’re out of Hershey bars, and where’s that peanut brittle? I think maybe Dawson’s been in it again. I ought to put a big mirror on the refrigerator door. That’ll keep him out of my treats, won’t it? You hear me, honey? I hate it when the coconut falls off. Why does the coconut fall off?

Somewhere in the middle:

Mama: Jessie, how can I live here without you? I need you! You’re supposed to tell me to stand up straight and say how nice I look in my pink dress, and drink my milk. You’re supposed to go around and lock up so I know we’re safe for the night, and when I wake up, you’re supposed to be out there making the coffee and watching me get older every day, and you’re supposed to help me die when the time comes. I can’t do that by myself, Jessie. I’m not like you, Jessie. I hate the quiet and I don’t want to die and I don’t want you to go, Jessie. How can I—How can I get up every day knowing you had to kill yourself to make it stop hurting and I was here all the time and I never even saw it. And then you gave me this chance to make it better, convince you to stay alive, and I couldn’t do it. How can I live with myself after this, Jessie?

End:

Mama: Loretta, let me talk to Dawson, honey.

by D.H. Lawrence

Novel

321 pages

Beginning:

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habits, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen,” (3).

Somewhere in the middle:

“It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises grasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, we there is true air. I am convinced that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish,” (285).

End:

“But a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and steer our courses to meet soon. John Thomas says goodnight to lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart,” (324).