Alana’s Reviews > Slouching Towards Bethlehem > Status Update

"At some point between 1945 and 1967 we had somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be playing. Maybe we had stopped believing in the rules ourselves." (123)

"It might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not…All that seemed clear was that at some point, we had aborted ourselves and butchered the job, and because nothing else seemed so relevant I decided to go to San Francisco." (85)

"Why have we made a folk hero of a man who is the antithesis of all our official heroes, a haunted millionaire out of the West, trailing a legend of desperation and power and white sneakers? But then we have always done that. Our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrait something deep in the grain, something unadmitted."