In cold blood

1966, Truman Capote

Cativante: dizem que Capote tirou 8.000 páginas de notas na investigação. Aparentemente, inventou a cena final. Estaria ele ansioso pela execução de Perry e Dick, que teimava em não chegar?
Seja como for, a escrita disciplinada, com três frentes,  é soberba. O ritmo perfeito
.

9 It was ideal apple-eating weather; the whitest sunlight descended from the purest sky, and an easterly wind rustled, without ripping loose, the last of the leaves of the Chinese elms. (...)
11 My husband cares more for his trees than he does for his children.
23 Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry but she always has time. And that's one definition of a lady.
69 But I thought, it can't be, there must be some mistake, things like that don't happen, you don't sell a man a big policy one minute and he's dead the next. Murdered. Meaning double indemnity.
(...) Well, it was a delicate situation. It appeared that legally we weren't obliged to pay. But morally - that was another matter. Naturally, we decided to do the moral thing.

On the road

1957, Jack Kerouac
Penguin

Ritmo frenético de música e vida, bebido à golada, à procura do 'beat', a satisfação e contentamento que invariavelmente nunca dura.

Sal Paradise e Dean Moriarty são a humanidade insatisfeita, completa com imperfeição e perversidade, a dar o seu melhor para disfrutar da vida.


7 The only people for me are the mad ones
14 I ran for it with my soul whoopeeing. And what a driver - a great big tough truck driver with popping eyes and a hoarse raspy voice who just slammed and kicked at everything and got his rig under way and paid hardly any attention to me. So I could rest my tired soul a little, for one of the biggest troubles hitchhiking is having to talk to innumerable people, make them feel that they didn't make a mistake picking you up, even entertain them almost, all of which is a great strain when you're going all the way and don't plan to sleep in hotels.

157 I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for nought, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casulaness and deep ignorance of it, (...) like the action of wind on a sheet of pure serene, mirror-like water. I  felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline view; like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon.
San Francisco foods (...) where the menus themselves were soft with the foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths and roasted dry and good enough to eat too.

209 You and I, Sal, we'd dig the whole world with a car like this because man, the road must eventually lead to the whole world.

217 Chicago musician: he was dainty stamping his foot to catch ideas, and ducked to miss others
Prez - with the collar falling back and the tie undone for exact sharpness and casualness. (...)

220 They withed and twisted and blew. Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy. They found it, they lost, they wrestled for it, they found it again, they laughed, they moaned - and Dean sweated at the table and told them to go, go, go.

223 If you sifted all Detroit in a wine basket, the beated solid core of dregs couldn't be better gathered

235 I was having a wonderful time and the whole world opened up before me because I had no dreams