“ For surely, if Bech’s own narrow and narcissistic life was miracle enough to write about, an interlocked miracle was the existence, wherever you went on a map, of other people living lives…
Bech had hardly ever visited a basement before; he had lived in the air, like mistletoe, like the hairy sloth, Manhattan sub-genus. Though he had visited his sister in Cincinnati, and written his freshest fantasy, Travel Light, upon impressions gathered during avuncular visits there, he had never in his bones before known what America was made of: lonely outposts, log cabins chinked with mud and moss.
Bech had hardly ever visited a basement before; he had lived in the air, like mistletoe, like the hairy sloth, Manhattan sub-genus. Though he had visited his sister in Cincinnati, and written his freshest fantasy, Travel Light, upon impressions gathered during avuncular visits there, he had never in his bones before known what America was made of: lonely outposts, log cabins chinked with mud and moss.
—
John Updike, Bech is Back.
These quotes are from two different chapters, but I feel like they’re just different arteries to the same organ of thought. The bones of America. Living in the air like mistletoe!
