“Wit and pedantry were out of place among these dreary villagers. Trees, hills, river … yet life was monotonously flat, straight… plankish … with a dreadful sameness everywhere like dust. .. a climate without any real extremes, deprived of virtue even in its mean … though there were trees, the sloping fields, the river, still life was hard, level. .. wooden.. .inevitable … and moments ran on mindlessly like driven cattle, and young men struggled in the net of their friends, relatives, and other connections for a while like dripping fish before wearing out their wills and settling down to live with the rest of the gently poor, their pets, and their obsequious diseases …where bitterness grew up on everything like ivy”
Omensetter’s Luck
By William H. Gass
