Status Updates From L'urlo e il furore

The broken flower drooped over Ben’s fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right; post and tree, window and doorway, and signboard, each in its ordered place.

So while Dilsey held the horse Luster put a splint on the flower stalk with a twig and two bits of string and gave it to Ben.

And damn You, too,” he said, “See if You can stop me,” thinking of himself, his file of soldiers with the manacled sheriff in the rear, dragging Omnipotence down from His throne, if necessary; of the embattled legions of both hell and heaven through which he tore his way and put his hands at last on his fleeing niece.

Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.

I aint doin nothin to him,” Luster said. “Mr Jason skeered him, dat’s
whut hit is. He aint kilt Miss Quentin, is he?

. . . his voice ceased, ebbed, left him staring at his mother with eyes that for an instant were quite empty of anything. It was as though his eyes were holding their breath, while his mother looked at him, her face flaccid and querulous, interminable, clairvoyant yet obtuse.

The day dawned bleak and chill, a moving wall of grey light out of the
northeast which, instead of dissolving into moisture, seemed to
disintegrate into minute and venomous particles, like dust that, when
Dilsey opened the door of the cabin and emerged, needled laterally into
her flesh, precipitating not so much a moisture as a substance partaking
of the quality of thin, not quite congealed oil.

It’s a curious thing how no matter what’s wrong with you, a man’ll
tell you to have your teeth examined and a woman’ll tell you to get
married.