I was upset.

– Caren Beilin

Revenge of the Scapegoat by Caren Beilin @ Bookshop

Quotes

What things, Pécuchet, must I think of now? What? Smoking might not be as harmful as a nuclear holocaust on its surface but it could be sinister, and it could be a synecdoche. It might make our lungs into hives of a kind of anti-honey. The human lung, I’m sure. is the split empire of The End. Cigarettes are surely awful.

“Bouvard. You smoke.”

“C’est une pipe!”

The sun was going down. Holograms of dead parrots flopped in the road. This was the Good Karma off Pine.

Someone else had said, “Get OFF!”

Then that cow got off and went away uphill. That’s it. I hadn’t thought of speaking as a potential area for helping myself. A scape goat does not believe, and I’ll say this twice, that anything coming out of her mouth can be heard. Not without SCREAMING. Not without a trick. It does not work to say, This hurts. It does not work to say, Please. But I had not even thought to say anything at all. I thought, All right, death by hoof. Yes. A scapegoat doesn’t think she can ask. No, she doesn’t believe in honest questions.