Word: humanity
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...veritable circus sideshow of diseased cripples and sexual freaks: the building's assistant director, a character called- "the horse," who cured his impotence through an operation turning him into a kind of centaur; the secretary who was born a test-tube baby, and so lacks any sense of human relationships; & couple who determined to safeguard their marriage by subjecting every conversation to a lie detector test; a preadolescent nymphomaniac who suffers from a disease that reduces her bones to liquid; and her mother, whose skin slowly turned to cotton and who was eventually made into a quilt...
...their motivations to a series of mechanical and sexual impulses? If, as the author once said, this novel is "a parable of city life," then it appears that we are a society of sick helping the sick. Abe, who holds a medical degree but has never practiced, breaks all human relations down into physician-patient relationships where, as "the horse" acknowledges, "Doctors are cruel, and patients endure their cruelty...that's the law of survival." It is not an appealing view of human nature...
...environment. In the end, he is driven to reconciling himself to his condition, and, as he embraces the poor, diseased nymphomaniac melting in his arms, he embraces his own disease. It is only in this affirmation of his loneliness and illness that the narrator affirms his human identity...
...daily hardening to face surveillance or arrest. She knows the policeman who trails her, picks out the government's spy at a political meeting, stares down the agent who watches her as she finally flees the counry. Her discretion is so instinctive that she insulates herself from all human contact, passing through lovers with the self-possession noted approvingly in a school report written during her father's arrest...
...That's what I love--nobody expects you to be more than you are, you know. That kind of tolerance--I didn't know it existed. I mean if you're not equal to facing everything there...you're traitor. To the human cause, justice, humanity, the lot--there's nothing else...