YEs, haunting. It has lain, buried but redolent, since I read it at school in those very Vermont hills, so many years ago.

But we don't go in for that kind of thing here in California. School shootings, drive-by shootings, Great White attacks, asphyxiating smog, bumper-to-bumper-to-bumper-to-bumper-to-bumper freeways, and madcap infatuations with fatuous dilettantes, yes. But manectomies by buzz-saw? No way. It would be bad for the environment, leaving bloodstains around.


A