MISS LONELYHEARTS by Nathanael West

[domradave]

This is one of the great American novels.
In an early chapter Miss Lonelyhearts (his personal name is never mentioned) ruminates on how mandolins are tuned.
"Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature...the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth while."