American Triptych

Three "modern gothic" works: a short story, a play, and a novel, all written in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The Position (short story): a group of young men compete for a job under mysterious circumstances. "Incredible, Lorin thought. Incredible that we should all be here. Incredible that we should have to be here. Why did they let things like this come to be? Who ARE 'they?' He thought of his railroad trip to this processing center: the mountains; the forests; the wasted countryside along the Barrens Route; the hollow rotting hulls of small towns, long deserted, which bore mute testimony to the death of a once energetic, proud, and independent people; and the Pit in the mountainside. This rail route swung around a bend near MacKenzie Mountain and overlooked the Pit. Pit #19, it said on the map. He remembered seeing the rails down below leading into it, the gray shacks, clotheslines, and lodge house units that clustered around it, the hellish brown smoke that flowed from the opening. Everyone in the seats ahead of him had stared out their windows in morbid fascination at the panorama below, much as they might at a dead man, recently fallen from a twelfth story window." Talking heads (one-act play): a political prisoner in a mental hospital meets with a therapist late at night with unexpected consequences for both. ELISE No! It's never too late. The director, Doctor Cunningham, will listen to me. I'll write a report telling what I've learned about you. I'll draw up a schedule of activities. MICHAEL They've already written your report, Elise. ELISE No, Michael. MICHAEL They've written your report and tomorrow they shove the electric needles under my eyeballs into the brain, turn on the juice, and fry my frontals. This whole thing is a sham and you're the last one to know it. In No Wise (novel): Coming of Age meets the Bureaucracy from Hell in an academic setting. "The door to the Carbon Hardness Testing Building flew open suddenly, knocking a hapless student into the shrubbery, and out strode Zack Zatwright. Charging down the steps and heedless of the path, Zatwright broke through a picket fence, trod over a flower garden, sent two cats scurrying, and stepped into a plastic kiddie pool before he realized that he was going the wrong way. He was on his way to teach his one class, and ordinarily his one-track mind allowed nothing to stop him: not people, not dogs, hedgerows, or even electric power substations. But his vaunted concentration had gone awry today. Something was interfering. His mind was straying from the task. That Newman fellow, he thought, what's he up to? What is all this talk about students? Why does he spend so much of our precious committee time with schemes about helping them to learn? Helping them learn! Learning is no piece of cake. Learning is painful and the sooner they realize it the better off they'll be. Why, when I was a student did anyone spare me in the Dash Drills? I had my struggles but I learned to fill up a whole test booklet in less than two hours. Sure, it was gibberish, but -- He rounded a corner and smacked into a slender coed sending her and her books sprawling. 'Excuse me,' he murmured."