Typing practice book cover: The Enormous Room

14 CHAPTERS

Ongoing Story

The Enormous Room

In Great War–era France,E. E.Cummingsis lifted, along with his friendB., from his job as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross, and deposited in a jail in La Ferté Macé as a suspected spy. There his life consists of strolls in thecour,la soupe, and his mattress in The Enormous Room, the male prisoners’ communal cell. It’s these prisoners whom Cummings describes in lurid detail. The Enormous Roomis far from a straightforward...

Campaign Progress

In Progress

Word Count92,166

Est. Practice2634 min

CHAPTERS

Introduction - “For This My Son Was Dead, and Is Alive Again; He Was Lost; and Is Found.”

He was lost by the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps. He was officially dead as a result of official misinformation. He was entombed by the French Government. It took the better part of three months to fi...

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I - I Begin a Pilgrimage

In October, 1917, we had succeeded, my friend B. and I, in dispensing with almost three of our six months’ engagement as Voluntary Drivers, Sanitary Section 21, Ambulance Norton Harjes, American Red C...

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II - En Route

I put the bedroll down. I stood up. I was myself. An uncontrollable joy gutted me after three months of humiliation, of being bossed and herded and bullied and insulted. I was myself and my own master...

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III - A Pilgrim’s Progress

Through the bars I looked into that little and dirty lane whereby I had entered; in which a sentinel, gun on shoulder, and with a huge revolver strapped at his hip, monotonously moved. On my right was...

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IV - Le Nouveau

“Vous ne voulez pas de café?” The threatening question recited in a hoarse voice woke me like a shot. Sprawled half on and half off my paillasse, I looked suddenly up into a juvenile pimply face with ...

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V - A Group of Portraits

With the reader’s permission I beg, at this point of my narrative, to indulge in one or two extrinsic observations. In the preceding pages I have described my Pilgrim’s Progress from the Slough of Des...

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VI - Apollyon

The inhabitants of The Enormous Room whose portraits I have attempted in the preceding chapter, were, with one or two exceptions, inhabiting at the time of my arrival. Now the thing which above all th...

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VII - An Approach to the Delectable Mountains

“Sunday (says Mr. Pound with infinite penetration) is a dreadful day, Monday is much pleasanter. Then let us muse a little space Upon fond Nature’s morbid grace.” It is a great and distinct pleasure t...

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VIII - The Wanderer

One day somebody and I were “catching water” for Monsieur the Chef. “Catching water” was ordinarily a mixed pleasure. It consisted, as I have mentioned, in the combined pushing and pulling of a curiou...

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IX - Zoo-Loo

This is the name of the second Delectable Mountain. Zulu is he called, partly because he looks like what I have never seen, partly because the sounds somehow relate to his personality and partly becau...

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X - Surplice

Let us ascend the third Delectable Mountain, which is called Surplice. I will admit, in the beginning, that I never knew Surplice. This for the simple reason that I am unwilling to know except as a la...

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XI - Jean le Nègre

On a certain day the ringing of the bell and accompanying rush of men to the window facing the entrance gate was supplemented by an unparalleled volley of enthusiastic exclamations in all the language...

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XII - Three Wise Men

It must have been late in November when la commission arrived. La commission, as I have said, visited La Ferté every three months. That is to say, B. and I (by arriving when we did) had just escaped i...

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XIII - I Say Goodbye to La Misère

To convince the reader that this history is mere fiction (and rather vulgarly violent fiction at that) nothing perhaps is needed save that ancient standby of sob-story writers and thrill-artists alike...

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