"He brushed his teeth. Standing upright, scrubbing the teeth as if he were looking after an idol. He then ran the big old-fashioned tub to sponge himself, backing into the thick stream of the Roman faucet, soaping beneath with the same cake of soap he would apply later to his beard.

Under the swell of his belly, the tip of his parts, somewhere between his heels. His heels needed scrubbing.

He dried himself with yesterday’s shirt, an economy. It was going to the laundry anyway. Yes, with the self-respecting expression human beings inherit from ancestors for whom bathing was a solemnity. A sadness. But every civilized man today cultivated an unhealthy self-detachment. Had learned from art the art of amusing self-observation and objectivity. Which, since there had to be something amusing to watch, required art in one’s conduct.

Existence for the sake of such practices did not seem worthwhile. Mankind was in a confusing, uncomfortable, disagreeable stage in the evolution of its consciousness. Dr. Braun (Samuel) did not like it. It made him sad to feel that the thought, art, belief of great traditions should be so misemployed. "


Saul Bellow, “The Old System,” originally published in Playboy (January 1968), reprinted in Collected Stories (NY: Viking, 2001), pp. 90-116, here pp. 90f.