He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw––knew it, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for the recurrent delirium of his days and nights, the nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness…

He halted and, with bewildered and horrified eyes, stared round him at the khaki mob, in the midst of which, overtopping it by a full head, he stood. “How many goodly creatures are there here!” The singing words mocked him derisively. “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world…” (BRAVE NEW WORLD)

Ink and acrylic on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

PREFERENCE, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.

An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no better than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die.

“Because,” he replied, “death is no better than life.”

It is longer.

(THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY)

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

“Well, I hadn’t thought of my work in terms of Social Problems…I always think more about it in terms of Human Beings.”

Ink on three pieces of paper, approx. 8 x 18in

...The other thing is that I have not said much about my father and I know I have not done him justice. I’ve been older now than he ever was for almost twenty years so in a sense I’m lookin back at a younger man. He went on the road tradin horses when he was not much more than a boy. He told me the first time or two he got skinned pretty good but he learned. He said this trader one time put his arm around him and he looked down at him and he told him, said: Son, I’m goin to trade with you like you didn’t even have a horse. Point bein some people will actually tell you what it is they aim to do to you and whenever they do you might want to listen. That struck me. He knew about horses and he was good with em. I’ve seen him break a few and he knew what he was doin. Very easy on the horse. Talked to em a lot. He never broke nothin in me and I owe him more than I would of thought. As the world might look at it I suppose I was a better man. Bad as that sounds to say. Bad as that is to say. That has got to of been hard to live with...I’ve thought about him a lot less than I should of and I know that ain’t right neither. I had dreams about him after he died. I don’t remember the first one all that well but it was about meetin him in town somewhere and he give me some money and I think I lost it. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all of that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up. (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN)

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

“I’m really into the WORK now. I mean it’s really—and I feel good about this. Because, you know, we wanna be doing this for forty more years, you know? And so I’ve gotta find some way to enjoy this that doesn’t involve getting EATEN by it, so that I’m gonna be able to go do something else. Because bein’ thirty-four, sitting alone in a room with a piece of paper is what’s real to me. This [points at table, tape, me] is NICE, but this is not real. Y’know what I mean?”

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

VIII

Buffalo Bill’s defunct

who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what I want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

The phone rings. His voice sounds queer, squeaky, as though he were frightened and jubilant at the same time. He asks me to substitute for him at the office. “Tell the bastard anything! Tell him I’m dying....”

“Listen, Carl...can you tell me...?”

“Hello! Are you Henry Miller?” It’s a woman’s voice. It’s Irene. She’s saying hello to me. Her voice sounds beautiful over the phone...beautiful. For a moment I’m in perfect panic. I don’t know what to say to her. I’d like to say: “Listen, Irene, I think you are beautiful...I think you’re WONDERFUL.” I’d like to say one true thing to her, no matter how silly it would sound, because now that I hear her voice everything is changed. But before I can gather my wits Carl is on the phone again and he’s saying in that queer squeaky voice: “She likes you, Joe. I told her all about you....” (TROPIC OF CANCER)

Ink and acrylic on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

“The effort to educate the uneducable is hopeless. Schools for adults soon become kindergartens for adults. The pupils are quite unable to take in the education proper to their years. The gogues thus have to provide them with amusement in kindergartens. The hope is that they will somehow learn to think as an accidental by-product of playing, but that hope is vain.”

Ink, watercolor and acrylic on paper, 8 x 5 1/8in

When THE MAKING OF AMERICANS was finished, Gertrude Stein began another which also was to be long and which she called A LONG GAY BOOK but it did not turn out to be long, neither that nor one begun at the same time MANY MANY WOMEN because they were both interrupted by portrait writing. This is how portrait writing began. (THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS)

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about lions. (THE OLD MAN & THE SEA)

Ink, acrylic and watercolor on spiral-bound sketchbook page, 14 x 11in

“...I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: That when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: That of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

“I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” (From William Faulkner’s Nobel Acceptance Speech, Stockholm, December 10th 1950)

Ink and watercolor on spiral-bound sketchbook page, 14 x 11in

“In my stories a reader will find that the devil accomplishes a good deal of groundwork that seems to be necessary before grace is effective.”

Ink and watercolor on paper, 11 x 7 1/2in

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter––tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning —

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (THE GREAT GATSBY)

Ink and acrylic on spiral-bound sketchbook page, 14 x 11in

“What a strange thing!” said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry. “This broken lead heart will not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away.” So they threw it on a dust-heap where the dead swallow was also lying. “Bring me the two most precious things in the city,” said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird. “You have rightly chosen,” said God, “for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.” (THE HAPPY PRINCE)

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

…Then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

(ULYSSES)

Ink on spiral-bound sketchbook page, 14 x 11in

A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face. (From the Afterward to THE MAKER)

Ink, acrylic and digital on sketchbook page, 14 x 11in

My grandfather used to say: “Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that––not to mention accidents––even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.” (THE NEXT VILLAGE)

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

Call me Ishmael. (MOBY DICK)

Ink and acrylic on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

So Dean couldn’t ride uptown with us and the only thing I could do was sit in the black Cadillac and wave at him...Dean, ragged in a motheaten overcoat he brought specially for the freezing temperatures of the East, walked off alone, and the last I saw of him he rounded the corner of Seventh Avenue, eyes on the street ahead, and bent to it again...

...Old Dean’s gone, I thought, and out loud I said, “He’ll be all right.” And off we went to the sad and disinclined concert for which I had no stomach whatever and all the time I was thinking of Dean and how he got back on the train and rode over three thousand miles over that awful land and never knew why he had come anyway, except to see me.

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty. (ON THE ROAD)

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

“Where’s my other sock?” demanded Grant. Schultz began to look around for it. The General walked uncertainly to a table and poured a drink from a bottle.

“I don’t think it wise to drink, sir,” said Schultz.

“Nev’ mind about me,” said Grant, helping himself to a second, “I can take it or leave it alone. Didn’ ya ever hear the story about the fella went to Lincoln to complain about me drinking too much? ‘So-and-So says Grant drinks too much,’ this fella said. ‘So-and-So is a fool,’ said Lincoln. So this this fella went to What’s-His-Name and told him what Lincoln said and he came roarin’ to Lincoln about it. ‘Did you tell So-and-So I was a fool?’ he said. ‘No,’ said Lincoln, ‘I thought he knew it.’” The General smiled, reminiscently, and had another drink. “That’s how I stand with Lincoln,” he said proudly.

(IF GRANT HAD BEEN DRINKING AT APPOMATTOX)

Ink, acrylic and watercolor on spiral-bound sketchbook pages, approx 14 x 33in

He asked me, “What do you do? Teach?”

This impressed me. My grandfather had been a teacher, and my father was a teacher, and from my childhood up it had been assumed by people that I in turn would become a teacher.

“No,” I said. “I’m a writer.”

He seemed less offended than puzzled. “What do you write?”

“Oh––whatever comes into my head.”

“What’s the point?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I wish I did. Maybe there are several points.”

We talked less freely after that. At his request I left him off in wet twilight at a Texaco station near the entrance of the New Jersey Turnpike. He hoped to get a ride from there all the way to Washington. Other sailors were clustered out of the rain in the doorways of the station. They hailed him as if they had been waiting for him, and as he he went to them he became, from the back, just one more sailor, anonymous, at sea. He did not turn and wave goodbye. I felt I had frightened him, which I regretted, because he had driven for me very well and I wanted him to marry his girl. In the dark I drove down the pike alone. In the first years of my car, when we lived in Manhattan, it would creep up to seventy-five on this wide black stretch without our noticing; now the needle found its natural level at sixty. The windshield wipers beat, and the wonderland lights of the Newark refineries were swollen and broken like bubbles by the raindrops on the side windows. For a dozen seconds a cross of blinking stars was suspended in the upper part of the windshield: an airplane above me was coming in to land. (PACKED DIRT, CHURCHGOING, A DYING CAT, A TRADED CAR)

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun.

This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this:

Listen:

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

It ends like this:

Poo-tee-weet?

(SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE)

Ink and acrylic on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

For a long time I went to bed early. Sometimes, my candle scarcely out, my eyes would close so quickly that I did not have time to say to myself: “I’m falling asleep.” And, half an hour later, the thought that it was time to try to sleep would wake me; I wanted to put down the book I thought I still had in my hands and blow out the light; I had not ceased while sleeping to form reflections on what I had just read, but these reflections had taken a rather peculiar turn; it seemed to me that I myself was what the book was talking about: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This belief lived on for a few seconds after my waking; it did not shock my reasons but lay heavy like scales on my eyes and kept them from realizing that the candlestick was no longer lit. (SWANN’S WAY)

Ink and watercolor on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. – “Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.” – Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. (SELF-RELIANCE)

Ink on paper 3 sheets of paper, approx. 11 1/2 x 24 3/4in

“Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.”

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

…Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back.

[KRAPP motionless staring before him. The tape runs on in silence.]

CURTAIN

(KRAPP’S LAST TAPE)

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

(THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK)

Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4in

“Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”

Ink on two sheets of paper (attached archivally on the verso), approx. 30 x 11in

-Private Collection-