the garage gospel: you're a machine a body an object
brace yourself against my shoulders here for this hard news, at ten: you’re a machine a body an object, Jim, no less than this rutilant Montclair, this coil of hose here or that rake there for the front yard’s gravel
Context
The doctrine delivered as a father's cruelty and the anthology's thesis at once: "you're a machine a body an object, Jim, no less than this rutilant Montclair." The boy is leveled with the car, the hose, the rake — a thing among things, an instrument to be known and operated. This is the body-as-machine creed stripped of any consolation, the "hard news" that the athletic body the whole book will drill, injure, and rank is, at bottom, an object with tricks and seams, no different in kind from a Mercury on a Tucson gravel lot.