Word: river
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...action of the novel is restricted to the McCandless house, located in a Hudson River town not far from New York City. The design of the residence is carpenter's gothic, "a patchwork of conceits, borrowings, deceptions... a hodgepodge of good intentions like one last ridiculous effort at something worth doing even on this small a scale." This description is a key to Gaddis' own architecture: a self-conscious scaling down of his earlier books, in which issues of decline and fraudulence were elaborately developed...
Mainly he believes in what he saw those August days in 1945. He believes in the piles of bodies in the river and in the melted skin and in the fires in the sky. He believes in Ota. In the present, he believes in his wife and in his home. He would believe in children too, if he had any. But he would not have children; he was afraid they would be affected by possible genetic damage caused by radiation. He believes quite strongly in his house, onto which he has just built an additional room. The house is lovely...
When the train arrived at the West Hiroshima station, Kawamoto and the other first-year boys gathered outside and, commanded by the senior boys, jogged in formation about two kilometers to the school. They jogged across the Shin Koi Bridge over the Ota River spillway, across a slim space of land to another bridge, which spanned the Tenma River, across another strip of land and the Nishi Heiwa Bridge over the Honkawa, finally crossing the Heiwa Bridge over the Motoyasu River. About 100 meters from the school gate, Kawamoto and his classmates were ordered to halt and march regimentally...
...route of the rest of his escape. Above the center of the panorama a bright red ball representing the hypocenter hangs by a cord. Kawamoto touches the pointer to the area of the playground, then moves it out into the city, away from the hypocenter, toward the Kyobashi River and the Miyuki Bridge...
...were trying to get away from the fires and head for the river. On the way, I lost sight of my teacher and proceeded alone. People burned too severely to survive grabbed at me as I went along. Those who could walk stumbled over the bodies; they wore tatters and were covered with ash. I saw a living baby clinging to the breasts of its dead mother. I saw another child of three or four beating her dead mother with her fists. Perhaps she did not know that her mother was dead and in desperation and confusion was trying...