karl61 wrote:from Sophie's Choice:
"I looked up at the ceiling in alarm. The lamp fixture jerked and wobbled like a puppet on a string. Roseate dust sifted down from the plaster, and I half expected the four feet of bed to come plunging through. It was terrifying - no mere copulatory rite but a tournament, a rumpus, a free-forall, a Rose Bowl, a jamboree. The diction was in some form of English, garbled and exotically accented, but I had no need to know the words. what resulted was impressionistic. Male and female, the two voices comprised a cheering section, calling out such exhortations as I had never heard. Nor had I ever listened to such goads to better effort - to slacken off, to push on, to go harder, faster, deeper - nor such huzzahs or gained first downs, such groans of despair over lost yardage, such shrill advice as to where to put the ball. And I could not have heard it more clearly had I been wearing special earphones. Clear it was, and of heroic length. Unending minutes the struggle seemed to last, and I sat there sighing to myself until it was suddenly over and the participants had gone, literally, to the showers. The noise of splashing water and giggles drifted down through the flimsy ceiling, then here were padding, footsteps, more giggles, the sharp smack of what sounded like a playful paw upon a bare bottom and finally, incongruously, the ravishing sweet heart of the slow movement of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony from the phonograph. Distraught, I went o the medicine chest and took an Alka-Selzer."
I won't write down the dialogue between schizophrenic Nathan and Sophie when he starts yelling at her at the beginning of the book. Or the words Stingo can't believe he is hearing on the beach when he lays down and listens to other new friends discuss their analysis.
Oh, the horror.