f intimacy about himself" (141).
A page later he is thinking about serving as a journalist in the 1967 Six-Day War (142). And then in the next paragraph he is tying all these events together in a contemplative state which portrays the world as a place which is, has been, and likely will always be a madhouse:
. . . For the second time in twenty-five years the same people were threatened by extermination: the so-called powers letting things drift toward disaster; men armed for a massacre. . . . Perhaps it was the madness of things that affected Sammler most deeply. The persistence, the maniacal push of certain ideas, themselves originally stupid, stupid ideas that had lasted for centuries, this is what drew the most curious reactions from him (143).
Sammler's often calm and "curious reactions" to the world stand often
...