SOURCE: Ward, Robert. Review of Childhood and Other Neighborhoods and Brass Knuckles by Stuart Dybek.Northwest Review 38, no. 3 (1980): 149-57.

In the following review, Ward views Dybek's stories as a “no-holds-barred assault on everything we have smugly assumed was reality.”

We say the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty; the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath … that seems to ride on grapeshot—is more beautiful than the “Victory of Samothrace”. …

We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.

Up to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer's stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap. …

—from The Futurist Manifesto, F. T. Marinetti, 1909

Necrophilia, as Erich Fromm described it...