Sublime

Quite a strange man, thought James, watching him go – but what a relief to discover he still contained the capacity to be taken by surprise.

He had a kindly face, it was handsome underneath the weathering, it had been strong before the sagging. His eyes were a clear, bother-free blue and his hair was a neat crown of curls, white and tight as lambs’ fleece.

utterly foolish;

it was only Melissa who ate the granola and he was thinking very hard about which granola to buy, the orange and cranberry or the coconut and tropical fruit.

Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed – all he’s got to do is thump on the drum, and there’s his response.

Meno

On another day, one of the timeless days after Max’s murder, she saw another vision of him. In South Africa a man walked out of prison after a lifetime sequestered from the public gaze. Nobody really knew what this Lazarus was going to look like. The only photograph the papers ever printed had been taken decades earlier. The man in that picture was

parity.”