gaddis + alchemy

[Keith]

For unlike progressive revelation, the enlightenment of total  
materialism burst with such vigor that there were hardly enough hands  
to pick up the pieces. Even Paracelsus was left behind (dead of  
injuries received in a drunken brawl); and once chemistry had  
established itself as true and legitimate heir, alchemy was turned  
out like a drunken parent, to stagger away, babbling phantasies to  
fewer and fewer ears, to less and less impressive derelicts of  
loneliness, while the child grew up serious, dignified, and eminently  
pleased with its own limitations, to indulge the parental memory with  
no doubt but that it had found what the old fool and his cronies were  
after all the time.  (The Recognitions, p. 132)