A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [165]
“I’ve lived on a ranch most of my life. My parents and I took a lot of trips. The moment of glory was entering this building and the Library of Congress in Washington. It was like coming into a sacred place. I knew, early on, that the writer afforded me a window to our past, an understanding of human relationships that set me on a bridge to cross and participate with my own generation. I was often lonely. It was not till I read Of Mice and Men that I realized I was not alone and that loneliness was a universal sadness of man.
“I’ve spent a lot of time with John Steinbeck. He bared his soul to bring light to me. He bared human frailty in his pages and in his own life—as did a hundred…no, a thousand other authors who knew what one little boy was going through and who stood tall for the dignity of man.”
What the hell is he getting at? Thornton wondered. He’s rambling. But would you believe the quiet in here? Believe it?
You ought to see Times Square silent. Taxis pulled over into parking lanes, and twenty-five thousand people, or more, watched the great screen.
“We tore down buildings like this not long ago,” Quinn went on, “in our everlasting hunt for the mall and the skyscraper. What the hell! The legacy of past generations can now be kept on a piece of software and flashed up on the screen with a tweak of the mouse.
“Something is missing from that. What is missing is the personal relationship, the love between writer and reader, all the hope and all the horror the writer has to tell you. It is you and the writer alone, together, that will give you understanding about the joy and fear, the jealousy and love you have with your parents and your sisters and brothers.
“I glory in the electronic age, but do not tear this building down. I believe that the salvation of man will not come from an IBM printout, but from the words, on stone indeed, that came down from Sinai. Let us not abandon all the great thought in these rooms to the proposition of putting all our faith into an impersonal machine. By so doing, we will become something less than human beings ourselves.”
Chapter 44
After the debate the ground shifted, radically. The Tomtree campaign seemed to run out of energy. O’Connell had splintered away part of the hard Right, not by politics alone, but by the growing charisma of the candidate. Is O’Connell too good to be true?
In Los Angeles, Quinn spoke to the Mexican-American community with a candor they had not heard. “We have no right to interfere with Mexican internal affairs, but for Mexico to be a good neighbor of the United States, its institutionalized corruption must stop. No better example of that is the exploitation of Mexican labor in factories along our borders.”
It was another of Quinn’s daring speeches, but some people finally heard out loud what they had been saying in whispers.
The following night was a gathering in the Hollywood Bowl for a two-hour telecast from the community of stars. It was a love-in.
Rita knew the instant her daughter-in-law phoned. Siobhan had pulled herself together for coherence every night when her son phoned. For the last two nights she had been unable to speak to him.
“She’s in and out of lucidity. We just don’t know how long.”
Mal and Quinn had been able to keep up civil contact, a new bend in their years together. The pressure was taken off when Mal phoned first.
“I’ve been visiting with your mother,” Mal said. “She is in a bad way, Quinn. If you can get back, you and Rita still have your wing at my place. I can book enough rooms in Grand Junction to fairly well cover the entourage.”
“It’s your dad,” Quinn said to Rita. “I need to go back.”
“Siobhan?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve got your mother in a quiet place, adjoining the south veranda. Beside Duncan and Lisa, and Rae, there should be other rooms open at the ranch house.”
“Rita and I will fly directly into Troublesome. We should be there after midnight or so. Mal…Mal…”
“Don’t say anything, Quinn. Get it straight that I am not sorry I told Darnell Jefferson what the President