Page 21

By Jack Joseph Smith

6. the accent sounding phony. And the sand is hard along the coastline. And Stavrogin shakes his head abruptly in order to see ANY dAMN thing with the wind. To live here. To be back at his birthright. But O'Neill means something. He means what Stavrogin is go- ing to do here. And he sees the Actress-Teacher's husbands face. The doctor. The smooth, the famous, the nice frightened Doctor's face talking about the wasting way in which his wife does not roll up the toothpaste. Is she smiling Stavrogin? Shit yes she's smiling. And the next day the movie really begins. The O'Neill and Stavrogin movie while the Doctor is bending down to his bumper in back of his own damn hospital, and with a brand new screwdriver is now taking off his back licence plate. Stavrogin was not laughing then. Why is he laughing now? Lord Go Away! Do you still have those licence plates in Carnegie, Pennsylvania? Stavrogin can talk: "God I need A drink!" But: "Oh Christ here comes the ice." One new Moon into full after Kenendy was shot down right on the steps of the Goodman Theatre and Huxley died in Harlem and Edward Alby was laughing at Bash and O'Neill on the tenement stairwell two days into beer with eight- hundred dollars worth of travelers checks still stuck into O'Neill's back buttoned pocket. Drinking drunkeness into lust the foggy window left Across the cornEa of their eyesights opened slit by slit to the raging and dangerous battle exploding with two pimps who wern't pimps at all as far as sex is con- cerned, but rather calculated and violent thieves preying on

Original Scan

Page 21

AI Interpretation

GPT

Stavrogin recalls a doctor removing his own licence plate, then associates drinking with theatre, public deaths and a fight with thieves.

Stavrogin moves from a doctor's complaint about toothpaste to drunken lust and violence. The speaker recalls fog across the eyes as a fight comes into view.

Claude

Numbered '6.', Stavrogin thinks about O'Neill and a doctor who is 'taking off his back / licence plate', then the prose returns to a Chicago night on 'the tenement stairwell', where 'the foggy window left Across the cornEa of their eyesights' and a fight breaks out with 'two pimps who wern't pimps at all'.

The page continues the comic plate story and darkens into violence, placing public deaths beside the characters' memories. The handwritten Across replaces canceled typed words and keeps this hand's capital-form A.