1 Breakfast at Madeline's Read Online Free PDF

likely, and this is what we must remember when we evaluate the actions of mere mortals for whom the merest act of love brings unbearable responsibility. And this is why we, all of us, choose to live our deepest lives in isolation—in clear sky, in Ethiopian, in newspapers. And if you choose to interrupt our lonesome glide, you do so at your peril, for one man's Ethiopian may be another man's clister, and he will fight for that ion of deepest life with every weapon at his command.
    And this is why I am entitling this tome "The History of Western Civilization Careening, as Seen through the Eyes of One of Its Primary Practitioners." Volume 1, as you shall see, is History. Volume 2 is Car eening. And Volume 3 is Practic ing.
    Pretty darn weird, I thought to myself, but intriguing. Not really my cup of tea, but then again, neither is Joyce.
    I took another sip of Ethiopian and turned the page.
    Preface, I read. It was a dark and dreamy night when I first learned that O.J. Simpson and Paula Barbieri did not love each other. To those who would say, no, O.J. was at this time a mere child with rickets, and it was your own progenitors at issue, I would reply: All life is metaph or, and one man's clister is an other man's Ethiopian.
    Indeed, all might have transpired otherwise in these days of waxless skis. The years of red, green, and blue wax are no more, and you can travel the streets for many years, as I have, without meeting a man who knows whether it's clister or glis ter...
    I skimmed the rest o f the page long enough to deter mine this was a reworking of the same preface. Again, there seemed to be some indication that his father had been searching for clister, or glister, one snowy morning so he could put it on his cross-country skis. Beyond that, the narrative once again twisted, turned, and ended with the now-familiar announcement that this was a preface to a three-volume "History of Western Civilization Careening, as Seen through the Eyes of One of Its Primary Practitioners."
    I turned the page.
    Preface, I read. Snoopy might have said it was a dark and lonely night, and he would have been correct, the most com mon and even comical clichés being the truest. Here, of course, the wrinkle was clister, or as some would have it, glister.
    I flipped the page.
    Preface, I read. Beware of clister; or as it may be, Ethiopian.
    I flipped again.
    Preface, I read.
    I flipped. Preface. I flipped again, and again, and again. Preface. Preface. Preface.
    I put the notebook down and picked up another one. A red one, with a date on the cover: June, 1983. Beneath that Penn had written: Civ Careening: Vol. 2.
    Volume 2. Okay, h ere we go. I opened up the note book. Preface, I read. Every man has a clister, or glister, as I learned one dark and snowy night...
    I quickly turned the page. Preface . Shit. I flipped the pages faster and faster, reading that ugly word Preface over and over, getting more and more frantic.
    I flung the notebook down, snatched another one and opened it. My heart sank.
    I threw open every single notebook. They went back thirty years, to 1968, and with every goddamn one it was the same. I shook all of The Penn's restaurant menus, Kleenexes, and cereal boxes out of my day pack. Each and every available writing surface had the word Preface at the top.
    I threw the whole mess on the floor and sat there. Donald Penn.
    His whole life had been one big preface.
    And that was all.
    Finis .

 
    5
     
    I sat there gloomily pu zzling over the clister—or glis ter—of life, when suddenly a cheerful voice inter rupted me. "Writing the Great American Screenplay?" said the voice.
    It belonged to Gre tchen Lang, the one and only ex ecutive director of the Saratoga Arts Council for the past fifteen years. If all a rts administrators were as top- notch as Gretchen, then art galleries would be as crowded as Knicks games, theater would still be alive, and ballet dancers would be so famous they'd get their own shoe commercials.
    Sweet as