Page 265

By Jack Joseph Smith

was a smooth, once jelly fat. Now there were lines, thin lines of red curved up under his eyes. The thing about his eyes was, they were like mine, and at least the pupils from dining. I knew he had fought hard to keep Do ya' see what I mean Animal? His is a useless challenge, as many challenges may be; but I re- peat it, yet I can't support it any longer with my own aithic blood. You see Animal, laborers think too? All the time, ya' know. The problem is that an American worker, when he works in the middle of the battering of factory sound, which is also a time when any man could not control being absol- utely alone, during this time, maybe ten hours of pressure extreme; the American worker dreams jea- lous dreams of those who don't work. He hates all: Nothing in his mind is not rejected or distroyed. But when the buzzer rings, he sees the rich with problems with their wives, and the hyppies with problems in their images, and then he goes out into the city to a can of beer and laugh... In the morning,) for me, it was not only tobacco and alcohol. I

Original Scan

Page 265

AI Interpretation

GPT

The page turns from Animal's exhausted face to labor, resentment, class fantasy, and the American worker's trapped imagination.

This final movement is severe. It treats work, beer, marriage, counterculture, and class fantasy as a system that keeps reproducing bitterness, and it closes nearer to social pressure than transcendence. This reading remains provisional because lower-page strikeouts, an obstruction, and some handwriting still need closer review.


Claude

The collection ends by returning to labour, resentment, and the trapped imagination of the American worker. The page refuses triumphal closure.