How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
'It was when I was working at the Lichfield Housing Office,' bubbled the leader, 'that this thing happened. There was the question of a vacancy and me getting upgraded. I was senior, you see.' [. . .] 'Mr Consett, who was in charge, told me it was a toss-up between me and a man called Maugham, very much my junior Maugham was, but Maugham was homo. Well, I thought about that a good deal. I was never that way inclined myself but, of course, there was something I could do.' (4.4.8)
When one of the organizers of a fertility rite near Lichfield tells Tristram about his life, his experience sounds a lot like Tristram's. By this point in the novel, though, Tristram is convinced that the wheel of human social history spins pretty quickly, and so his words of wisdom to this guy are to sit tight and wait for things to come back around again. As he says: "One of these days we're bound to go back to liberalism and Pelagianism and sexual inversion and, and—well, your sort of thing" (4.4.13).