Carpenter's Gothic by William Gaddis

Author:William Gaddis
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 1999-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

— I said cash, McCandless. Ten thousand cash you don't have to trust anybody, sitting here in this mess pretending you don't know what's going on over there? Look at it, it's a nightmare, twenty years of independence and the whole continent's a nightmare, they've wiped out everything it took a hundred years to put together. Everything's gone backwards, more than a million of them killed by their own governments, the rest can't even feed themselves. Ninety five percent of those countrief. used to grow their own food now every one of them imports it, seven or eight hundred different languages they can't even talk to each other, one in a hundred of them's a refugee, sleeping sickness, river blindness, starvation, madness, anywhere you go there's madness, people going staring mad is that any better? is that what you want?

— Good God no Lester, far be it from me. Better off with your missionaries back there in good old King Leopold's Congo, the Belgians using them for pistol practice, chopping off their hands, stringing them on fences, burning their…

— Will you stop it? It's just your, you know what it is? It's cheap. It's like your book there it's cheap, it's the same cheap, condescending, twisting things around like this having business with the Bible and all the rest of your cheap…

— Nothing cheap about it Lester, a trillion dollars' worth of weaponry and your evangelicals in there warming things up with don't fool yourselves thinking I come to send peace on earth, I come not to send peace but a sword. Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty! Sing them a few bars of that? The Son of God goes forth to war A kingly crown to gain; His blood red banner streams afar…

— Whose evangelicals do you want then! Whose fundamentalists do you want, talk about your little taste of Georgia how about a little taste of Islam? You think your Georgia judge there sounds any different from an ayatollah? You talk about chopping off hands, you want them sitting you out there in a public square with the Moslem Brotherhood piling in shouting Allah Akbar while they, where's your insurance policy, actual severance through or above the wrist and you run in to collect your five thousand from Bai Sim convenient offices everywhere? Whose jihad do you want, McCandless! They've been at it for a thousand years, they've been at it since ten ninety when Hasan brought his cutthroats out of Qum, cut your throat and they're guaranteed a seat in paradise. Talk about having business with the Bible how about having business with the Koran, if you think…

— That's a generous offer, how about having business with neither damned one of them. I don't quite follow what you're trying to…

— You could end up on the wrong side, you know that? You know that, McCandless?

— I'll tell you one thing I know. I'll tell you…

— Because maybe they turned you. Maybe people think they turned you. It's the same thing.

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