The human body in Wallant's world is a scandal. Mankind is portrayed in pain and ugliness, in the humiliation of a body that sweats, smells, runs over from glands out of control, ages and finally decays. The human situation exceeds the barrenness of Eliot's wasteland; it is a torture chamber, a garbage dump where people are buried alive and thrash around until they can no longer move. They wait for the peace of oblivion. "'Life is an avalanche—the little stones only bruise you, the big ones kill you. What's the sense getting excited?'" (p. 88)

Wallant's novels tend to maximize the vulnerability of the flesh, which is soft. It bruises, it tears, it can be crushed. Most of all, flesh can be pierced through by so many cutting edges…. Throughout Wallant the flesh is pierced, whether in punishment, like Sol ramming his hand through the spiked paperweight...