Chapters 41-45 Summary

In Chapter 41, the author remembers how his maternal grandfather married a crazy violinist after his first wife had died in childbirth. The second wife tortured her step-children both physically and emotionally out of insane jealousy, leaving lifelong scars. The result was a disdain for European and American aristocracy that carried through to the author. In Chapter 42 the author lists some of the men he has known who committed suicide. Upon asking a physician who treated drug addicts at Bellevue Hospital whether the patients contemplated suicide, the physician tells him that the patients were insulted if asked. "An idea that sick had never entered their heads!" (pg. 141.) In Chapter 43, the author tells of his brother's experimental art, basically different colors of oil paint squashed between glass or tile surfaces. The question is whether this is art or not, and the author does...