A terrible time

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Terrible! Terrible: Excite terror, Extreme, Inspiring awe.
Yes! "A terrible time." GR.360  Foolish Slothrop is quite
literally sicker than he has ever been. "Mommy!" But Nalline
smirks and won't answer. He is the sad soul of America,sick,
very sick, weak in his heart. Even the sun mocks him and
will visit his cellar for only half an hour. The sound of
his country is fading away..."Fading like WASP ghosts, the
old-time DPs trailing rootless now down the roads out of
memory, crowding the rooftops of the freights of
forgetfulness, knapsack and poor refugee pockets stuffed
with tracts nobody's read, looking for another host: given
up on Rocketman here."  And just I am about to turn away and
brood, dejected, mocked, displaced, leaking, Slothrop
"elaborates a fantasy." And who has come to offer Slothrop a
way out? Why it is Enzian. Does Enzian offer Slothrop a way
out? Does he offer the reader a way out? Enzian to Slothrop:
"All anyone knows about you is that you keep showing up." So
Slothrop will not die, will not fade away, but for the
reader, all is changed, changed utterly, a terrible
something is born. Or something is dead. Not ONLY dead like
Jamf, but dead with a Destiny. And Slothrop, when the sun is
gone here, "so totally it might as well be for good,"
Slothrop knows there is no Pope's staff that's gonna bloom
and nothing is "left but "God's indifferent sunlight in all
its bleaching terror." Terrible Bleaching White terror.