After such sexualist reduction, what forgiveness? The difficulty lies in the accepted impermanence of our art, our skill, and the relentless transformation of today's news feature into tomorrow's newsprint into the day after tomorrow's wrapping paper for pakodas.

In all the cases of John Silenceand they were many and often terribleno other psychic affliction has ever, before or since, impressed me so convincingly with the pathetic impermanence of the human personality, with its fluid nature, and with the alarming possibilities of its transformations.