John Dos Passos - The 42nd Parallel
Chapter One: U.S.A.
The young man walks fast by himself through the crowd that thins
into the night streets; feet are tired from hours of walking eyes
greedy for warm curve of faces, answering flicker of eyes, the set
of a head, the lift of a shoulder, the way hands spread and clench;
blood tingles with wants; mind is a beehive of hopes buzzing and
stinging; muscles ache for the knowledge of jobs, for the
roadmender's pick and shovel work, the fisherman's knack with a
hook when he hauls on the slithery net from the rail of the
lurching trawler, the swing of the bridgeman's arm as he slings
down the whitehot rivet, the engineer's slow grip wise on the
throttle, the dirtfarmer's use of his whole body when, whoaing the
mules, he yanks the plow from the furrow. The young man walks
by himself searching through the crowd with greedy eyes, greedy
ears taut to hear, by himself, alone.
The streets are empty. People have packed into subways,
climbed into streetcars and buses; in the stations they've
scampered for suburban trains; they've filtered into lodgings and
tenements, gone up in elevators into apartmenthouses. In a
showwindow two sallow windowdressers in their shirtsleeves are
bringing out a dummy girl in a red evening dress, at a corner
welders in masks lean into sheets of blue flame repairing a
cartrack, a few drunk bums shamble along, a sad streetwalker
fidgets under an arclight. From the river comes the deep rumbling
whistle of a steamboat leaving dock. A tug hoots far away.
The young man walks by himself; fast but not fast enough, far
but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered
scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last
subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the
steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the
wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the
boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds: One bed is not enough,
one job is not enough, one life is not enough.
At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone.
No job, no woman, no house, no city.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/usa.htm.
