He was boisterous, then silent; he cursed and begged; he confessed and threatened. He crumpled into a ball, like paper. He marched, cheering: heyheyhey. He snickered while he wept, and joked while he prayed. Spitting, he offered up his soul. Vain, he was humble. Proud, he was ashamed. I sign my petition, he cried, carried quite away, with my thirty million names. And I am lonely among voices, these voices roaring in me. At last his strength began to fail him; he wearied of it all, and finally cared for nothing, went half to sleep. Through his head, to the tunes of children’s songs, his pitiful beliefs, his little sentences of wisdom, danced foolishly as he dozed, the meters they were forced to skip to reducing them to a vulgar gibberish. He tried to rally his thoughts and form them in unassailable squares, but not a line would hold, they broke ahead of any shooting, and the Logos wandered disloyally off, alone, rudely hiccoughing and chewing on pieces of raw potato, looking surly and dangerous. No book but Nature is the word of God. Logos. No ghost. Whirled. Screech. Hisssst.

—William Gass, Omensetter’s Luck