Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

To Be

1987; University of Iowa; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.17077/0021-065x.3530

2330-0361

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison,

LIFE IS TERRIBLE," Joel said.This sentence gave him evident pleasure."No, it is not," Laura said.He is indecent, she thought."It is full of joy and delight and our troubles are of our own making," she said.She did not entirely believe this, how could one.But it vexed her to see Joel sitting in his sunny kitchen, rolling his own cigarettes?he could well afford to buy cigarettes?discoursing with relish on the terribleness of life, his own life in smooth working order.He sits at a round oak table and sleeps in a brass double bed, how can he say life is terrible, Laura thought; he would probably declare against happiness in the Pantheon.Laura had been wont, in times past, to judge people by their response to the Pan theon, which she had experienced as a place of perfect happiness and safety, as proof in fact that the world was good.She would like to have skated on a sheet of thin ice over the marble floor of the Pantheon while clouds drifted over the round aperture above.Joel said her aesthetic apprecia tion?that is what he called it?wasa matter of upper-class social condi tioning; he put it to her that the Pantheon reminded her of the dome of a Wall Street bank.