The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires-to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. … He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected. -chapter 8
The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotism” and “love of sport.”
To a true-blue professor of literature in an American university, literature is not something that a plain human being, living today, painfully sits down to produce. No; it is something dead.
