Word: grayness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Charley Grays burn themselves out in the race to pass the Blakesleys and creep up on the Burtons; then find themselves at the end with no spiritual props to make life bearable. The question Author Marquand's book raises is: "Are the rewards of all your efforts worth the effort?" But Charley Gray himself may be too busy even to hear the issue stated. Like an aircraft pilot who has passed his own point of no return-the point on a long flight where it takes more gas to go back than to go on to his destination-Charley...
...would be strange if his audience didn't. Marquand likes Charley Gray and he is vexed with the people and circumstances that push him around. He thinks Charley is in a rat race; he is frank enough to admit that he finds himself running...
...brought him another $20,000 a year. Practical, a lover of comfort and the good things of life (including, among others, three cars, two Scotches before dinner), Marquand is by no means contemptuous of money and is mightily pleased that he has made the financial grade. But like Charley Gray, he knows that something is missing. He wishes there were something more at the finish than an annuity and a new station wagon. And he is no more sure than Charley Gray what that something is. Says Marquand: "I've been so warped and conditioned by life that...
...Warner calls 'mobilized downward.' Of course, I had read Horatio Alger and I was ready to face this change in circumstance in a sportsmanlike manner." In Point of No Return it is Anthropologist Malcolm Bryant who explains such niceties of the scientific vocabulary to Charley Gray...
...gone to Newburyport High School instead of Groton, Exeter or St. Mark's. At Harvard, the more snobbish prep-school men of his class cold-shouldered him and sometimes, he imagined, pointedly crossed the street to avoid speaking to him. (John tucked that away, too. Charley Gray, thinking back over what it had been like to go to Dartmouth from Clyde High School, hopes to send his own son to Exeter.) Even today Marquand somewhat sourly remembers that he was a "greaseball" at Harvard and was never invited to join a club. Now Harvard's Alumni Bulletin asks...