The Glass Canoe by David Ireland

Author:David Ireland [Name, Author]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction Classics
ISBN: 978-1-9219-6102-1
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2012-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

ALKY JACK GETS SERIOUS

Alky Jack sat talking to himself. I walked over a bit behind him. Yes, still at the benefit party. Out here the dark was much closer. Only a few strung bulbs to keep it at bay.

‘We will go then, you and I, where the pelican shits its nest.’

He’d seen me coming.

‘How’s Jack?’ sitting on the grass beside him.

‘This world’s rapidly giving me the tom-tits.’

‘I’ll never believe that, Jack. You love the place. It’ll be all they can do at closing time to get you out.’

‘Drink your beer.’ He paused to look round at the party. Bodies were all over the grass, the tents set up for roulette, crown and anchor, pontoon.

I look sideways at him, he’s looking gloomily into his beer. The whole world’s at the bottom of that glass.

‘Reminds me of the twenties and thirties. The economy’s falling to pieces, so they clamp down on obscenity, pornography, dissent, loud voices. All they want is populations with their heads down and their mouths shut, so they can patch up a mess that’s getting worse all the time. So they want to clean up the population’s morals, instead of making a new system and disturbing the owners of the present one. They pick at symptoms instead of healing the sick body. They find the smell offensive and want to deodorise it instead of burying it.

‘And the people they’re doing this to won’t resist. They’ve had proved to them lately that the effectiveness of military power is limited, the economy shows them the shortcomings of romantic free enterprise, and the polluted water, earth and sky tells them there are no more frontiers: we’ve come to a brick wall. The end of the line. As far as this system’s going to take us.

‘Newspapers tell us the social fabric is falling apart, there’s anxiety and terror, lawlessness in the streets, in the institutions that overlook the streets. Work is empty, living pointless. No one created this mess and no one wants it, but we can’t escape it. They want to crush the groans and cries that come from it.

‘And the older among us know no resistance is possible. We’re the stoned age, Meat.’ And he grinned at me and got to his feet. He wasn’t all that steady, but with the skill of that portion of his brain not eaten out by alcohol, that kept him moving in search of another drink, he arrived at the keg and brought me back a drink as well without splashing any.

‘We are at the mercy of the best traditions of modern discourse: argument by assertion. I do it myself, I get angry. I predict a return to magic. Only in guesses and superstitions and blind hope can we get comfort.

‘The modern cult of violence and animalism,’—he looked down at his trousers, but said nothing. I looked too, but there was no sign there of violence or animalism—‘is an admission of defeat. We can’t be men and resist or overthrow the monster that

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