In The Final Ball structure and messier are one: the voices of people seeking fulfillment of their selfish interests can be heard but do not communicate with each other; thus the fragmentary story develops in thirty snatches of internal monologues “spoken” by a local seamstress, wise and foolish girls, the widow Andernoth whose husband has not returned from the war, a melancholy teacher, a Kaftaesque school-board member, and the dead, forgotten in the scrabble for new cars, new villas, and refrigerators.

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