the garage gospel: a promising old man
I’m just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN. It’s… potential may be worse than none, Jim. Than no talent to fritter in the first place
Context
The suicide-of-success warning's deepest root, prefiguring Clipperton and the Fresno case: the father's terror is "a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN," because "potential may be worse than none." Unrealized athletic promise is figured as the worst fate available — worse than never having had the gift — the same institutional dread E.T.A. will later systematize in its warnings about reaching, or failing to reach, the ceiling you've been pointed at. The body that could have been great and wasn't is the anthology's standing cautionary corpse, and here it is still alive, guzzling in a Tucson trailer.