“I straightened up, took some more air, bent down, touched it, and pulled on the part that was showing. It came up without any trouble, and I sat down and went over it, brushing off the dirt. It was a bone, a human pelvis, and there was not any doubt about it. That’s a damn strange thing to be inside of somebody, I said to myself. And it was, and it is. What I know about skeletons has to do with animals and fish, and I had never seen anything like this except in the medical and first-aid books my … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

“She sits, sweeping aside gelled strands of her black hair, revealing a rakish grin. ‘So,’ she asks, ‘you enjoying Cairo?’ “‘Oh, yeah. It’s really interesting,’ he says. ‘I have a couple of gripes, but they’re pretty minor.’ “‘Like?’ “‘Nothing serious.’ “‘Tell me one.’ “Well, the air is kind of hard to breathe, with all this pollution. Sort of like inhaling from an exhaust pipe. The heat makes me faint sometimes. And the food isn’t all that edible. Or maybe I’ve just been unlucky. Also, it’s a police state, which I don’t love. And I get the impression that the locals … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

“‘He had always been appalled at the fast hysterical pace with which businessmen marched toward death and the end of time. And yet he didn’t honestly know how a man, how he, personally, Victor Norman, should use his time. He had only the sense of thus far being a spendthrift with it, and the unexpressed urge not to fling it away so extravagantly, not to tip, as it were, employers with it. How in this brief life, this life that had been gadgeted and gimmicked half to death, could a man use time? Where could he hunt and savor time … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

“‘But Grandma never said anything about how the places might make you feel. She wasn’t a talker, especially not about things like that. When she did talk, it was to tell you how to do something, or to tell you something that had happened before you were born, or to remind you how to act right. She had strict ideas about acting right. She wouldn’t touch you much either. What she liked to touch were woods things, things that came out of the ground. But even without the talking, she taught me to let into my insides the real of … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature