a personal history of rereading

I am too pure for you or anyone.

This may well be my favorite comma in all of literature. It’s not grammatically necessary; you might, if you were so inclined (I’m not), argue that it’s incorrect. But here it is, the last breath of the paragraph, and I like to think that it’s SJ’s way of saying, “This is your last chance to set this book down and go do something else, like work in your garden or go down the street for an ice cream cone. Because from this point on it’s just you, and me, and whatever it is that walks, and walks alone, in Hill House.” I don’t think that anyone’s going anywhere. Right?

But I’d say you must die a little, have a book of matches go off in your hand, see your best friend copying your exam, visit an Indian reservation and see their plastic feathers, the dead dream. One must be a prisoner just once to hear the lock twist into his gut. After all that one is free to grasp at the trees, the stones, the sky, the birds that make sense out of air.