Page 82

By Jack Joseph Smith

for lunch. Jesus H. Christ; newspaper stand in fucking Pittsburgh. Swabbing the halls at Boy's Town Nebraska, (the height of the structure for unfavored youth.) Dishwashing, auto parts; ya name it; and now this rich man's hell hole." The factory; not hell; your alive. (But the shit eat'en image of it.) He walked with his head bent like the thin wire shapes of metal. Iron, steel; not curved out of weakness; his body stayed rigged to the sound; like a jib tacking in a sharp tacking wind. In his car he looked into the mirror. Huge curved up mustache, hair getting long to his neck bone, "Buffalo Bill; can the Colonell do suffering without glory?" Will, will endure the time it takes.) He was twenty-six. Colonel had hatred for downtown L.A. He wanted out of it; out of the absurd task of driving the freeway's five days a week. The smog during summer of the year without rain or wind was thick. It reminded him of Pitts- burg; but it was worse. He could feel it in his eyes, and his position made him sick. He had arrived at his place on Hart Street. A large house on the ocean block, where he

Original Scan

Page 82

AI Interpretation

GPT

Colonel's work history and commute become a geography of humiliation, endurance, and bodily sickness.

The page makes factory labor feel like a deforming weather system: metal, sound, smog, freeway repetition, and Pittsburgh memory all press into the body. The mirror moment turns him into a self-mythologizing figure, asking whether he can suffer without glory while still trying to endure the time it takes.


Claude

Colonel's monologue makes wage-work sound like humiliation without glory — the daily commute rendered as quiet erosion of identity. The page is our first sustained interior of one of the older beach men.