Little Casino by Gilbert Sorrentino

better. You can, however, when you wish, convey strong emotional effects, repetitious though they may be.
    I’m disappointed not to be coming back to you with an offer to touch base again with you. You know that I’ve always been a big “fan” of yours, even during those times when you were obsessed with lists of “fancy phrases.” I know that I was supposed to like, or at least admire, those lists, but I was never really able to get into them. They were, of course, occasionally powerful and intriguing, but they were also somewhat paranoid and compulsive. I regret to say that I am not at all comfortable at the thought of reviving our friendship, relationship, what have you. I feel, strongly, that a decision to do so would be a disservice to both of us. Your letter, despite its length and, if I may be forgiven for saying so, its obsessive repetitiousness, has its poignant beauties, but it is also dark and claustrophobic and extremely narrow in scope. I might even go so far as to say that I found it full of a kind of disguised, benign unpleasantness. I don’t think, really, my old friend, that you desire a resumption of what you call “strengthened sweetness,” when such a relationship does not suit my particular needs at the present time.
    As you will recall, I’m sure, I did all that I could for our relationship for nearly a decade, only to see it dwindle into a charade of unpleasantness on your part. Our separation, at the end of that experience, left much to be desired. I may be dead wrong, but the emotional effect of that separation was one that only a person with a perverse sense of the comic aspects of life would want to experience again. And that does not describe me, as you know. I did feel a twinge reading your letter, for although it is repetitiously obsessive and darkly paranoid, it is ashine, here and there, with your talent for expression and the mot juste. And although I am, more often than not, befuddled by your poetic phrases, they occasioned a number of emotionally wrenching memories. I have, as you know, great admiration for you still, and for your courage in writing. I regret to say, however, that I do not wish to see you again. I’m sorry. Please do not write again, unless you feel that you have something fresh and interesting to convey, a “new and different” offer, so to speak.
    Sincerely,
    Your friend

    Although these stiff, even stilted and wooden letters are supposed to evoke a modern world that is at once badoom as well as baraboom, it may be noted, in objection, that among the fancy phrases sorely missed are “I’ll never smile again,” “Shoot if you must this old gray head,” and “I saw a groundhog lying dead, Dead lay he.” Devoted Friend forgot to add, or, perhaps, insert them.
    “Harry, how about another coffee over here, OK?”
    What if it were to be revealed that these stiff, stilted, and wooden letters were exchanged between Donald and Dolores?
    “Here’s your coffee, friend,” Harry says, carefully noting that the friend so addressed is not Donald, who has long since moved out of the neighborhood—as has Dolores.
    “I am putting a pound to win on Small Advance in the fourth at Gulf Stream,” Harry says. “Do you want to come in for another pound? At eight to five, it is a nice, comfortable price.”
    Would Dolores of the dark eyes and deep-golden skin and the face of Tibullus’s Delia ever have written such a caitiff, whorish letter? Even to Donald?
    NB: “These letters can only be thought of as the most elementary exercises in the epistolary. They are, even at best, stiff, stilted, and wooden. Their author, student though he or she may be, would do well to consider a career in handicapping, under the able tutelage of Harry the waiter.”

Clarity, neatness, and thoroughness

    H E WAS RAISED A ROMAN CATHOLIC, AND while not relentlessly devout, was a good Catholic, heard mass every Sunday and on all Holy Days of Obligation, went to Confession and received the