FACTS: There are three women in his life. The first is J. He falls in love with her in his twenties. He has done poorly at university and barely gets his degree. There is no sign of his being great.

The lion turned to glare back over its shoulder. At the same time there came the Slam! Slam! of guns and up ahead in the burning red sand-dune spurts of dust like sudden tufts of dead grass where the bullets hit. At the lion's side the wounded lioness dragged herself. 

It was, inevitably, his mother who told him. Even in his generation of late-marriers, of self-made orphans affiliated with nothing but each other, forgetters of birthday cards and Confirmation

Dmitri Shostakovich was born in 1906 in what is now Leningrad and began composing music at the age of eleven. Although chiefly known for his powerful symphonies, some of his finest ideas have been expressed in the form of chamber music. In these smaller works, many of the bold effects of his dramatic orchestral creations are foreshadowed. 

Old Halla is dying. Painless, speechless, he sits all day in a padded chair. As the sun shifts, he is spoonfed and wheeled among jungle views. Sometimes he grips a passing arm and holds on.

I know all about wails. Candide had a wail around his garden, Jonah had a whale-wall deep-down in midpassage. Meursault had his wall of sun. Bartleby, Melville’s man, had his cubicle and his staring wail.

I spent the afternoon driving to New Hartford to the ice cream plant for twenty-five pounds of sliced dry ice. I had them cut the ice into ten-inch long slivers about three-quarters of an inch in width, wrapped the ice in heavy brown paper and drove it back to Brookfield and the widow’s jammed drill-point. 

You have lost something. You look for it. You find a key in your pocketbook. A picture. Two books of matches from Baltimore alley restaurants. Your mind has slipped in ways that you cannot explain.

Why did Paul Flannery prefer to play the field? Paul liked variety, savored what he vulgarly called “a mixed grill.” Why vulgarly? Because mixed grill is the name given to a dish, popular in Europe

This is one of those cruise ships dedicated to helping people. These ships embark every day now from such places as Miami, Liverpool, Naples or Athens, some of them stuffed with psychiatrists trying to help the passengers forget their troubles, others with physical culture experts trying to beat the blubber off a fat clientele, others with religious leaders trying to purge or mystify those who are aboard.