Alright, we calmed down. This is more or less what we wrote during the first half of the Twillight Zone episode "A Passage For Trumpet," which due to computer retardness our interns are having to re-type during the second half of "A Passage For Trumpet."
Consider Jack's recent statements that he is a "bad man." Jack typically doesn't favor the reader with details of his moral code. Indeed, though his opinions on entertainment are well-known, his laws of ethics and code of honor he keeps to himself. What might the reader discern from this? Does Jack follow strict moral principles? How does he amend for flaws? What are his most basic laws?
Some young and enterprising scholar could make quite a name for himself coming up with a means of annotating Jack's writings in the way that fellow K. figured out how to annotate Mozart. Lord knows it would save us some time, time which we don't have to spare, on account of our job and all the drinking we do, which is a lot, an embarrassing amount of it post-work at Callender's of Wilshire, where we are in love with the waitress Ramona, because she always knows we want Dewar's and soda, sometimes before we've even sat down, and that we like to look at the appetizer menu and she has cute freckles. She's probably in love with us because we expressed so much interest in her sociology studies at UCLA.
Jack notes he has a new roommate. He says it almost casually. Surprising, considering that his previous roommates without exception have led, at the very least, dramatic lives. Knowing Jack's volatility, there is almost no question that this "Alison" will have some extreme effect or another on Jack's life. Since he is reluctant to offer a prediction himself, we won't presume, but one hopes she will be appearing again soon in the text, in more fully realized form.
"Have These Leaves.." is a fine piece of prose. Jack doesn't usually indulge in such poignance (or, for the cynic, parody of poignance.) We are all of us familiar with the tumult of bread-changes at Subway, but Jack takes from this small madeline a world of memory, and the distinct sorrow at seeing the passage of time. Still, one wonders that he didn't go further than he might have. For example, every Subway from Franklin, TN to Riverside, CA (and we know this, personally, through research) stresses this inevitable change through its wallpaper, a pastiche of early New York subway maps. So right in front of Jack as he dines is a reminder of the tortured sea-journey of man on Time's storm-tossed marintime.
Did this elude him? As readers know, we here at Somenotions are New Critics: i. e. we assume that the text is "perfect" and not historically tainted, and that omissions or prejudices are the authorial intent, rather than the result of larger literary, historical, or social forces. So we must attribute this change to Jack's blindheaded wistfulness, his longing for the bread of his youth. Indeed, who doesn't long for that "bread" of youth, the soft roll of pre-puberty, or the hardened bagette of later development?
