Love and Death on Long Island: A Novel

bibulous

tetchy

To the question ‘What is it that most depresses you in life?’ I had replied, The unequal distribution of beauty.’

By very definition, said Chesterton, our memories are of what we have forgotten.

scurrilous

Sex is destiny, is written – an injunction, a commandment, a ukase, to which no resistance, with which no compromise, has ever been possible. I had no great fears on that account.

glissading,

Banal, in that, despite an uncustomary gentleness of mien, the morphological type was one very much in the public domain; it exemplified what I take to be a specifically American criterion of ‘cuteness’ – which is to say, beauty untranscended by mystery, tragedy or spirituality, beauty golden and well nourished and so vacuously secure in its own na

asphodels