It's A True Image, Born Of A

She Was Happy, And Perfectly In Line With The Tradition Of Those Women They Used To Call "ruined," "fallen," Feckless, Bitches In Heat, Ravished Dolls, Sweet Sluts, Instant Princesses, Hot Numbers, Great Lays, Succulent Morsels, Everybody's Darlings . . .

It's A True Image, Born Of A False Spectacle.

Beauty Has No Other Origin Than The Singular Wound, Different In Every Case, Hidden Or Visible, Which Each Man Bears Within Himself, Which He Preserves, And Into Which He Withdraws When He Would Quit The World For A Temporary But Authentic Solitude

They Remain Dead, The People I Try To Resuscitate By Straining To Hear What They Say. But The Illusion Is Not Pointless, Or Not Quite, Even If The Reader Knows All This Better Than I Do. One Thing A Book Tries To Do, Beneath The Disguise Of Words And Causes And Clothes And Grief, Is Show The Skeleton And The Skeleton Dust To Come. The Author Too, Like Those Of Whom He Speaks, Is Dead.

The Vaporish Cocaine Loosens The Contours Of Their Lives And Sets Their Bodies Adrift, And So They Are Untouchable.