Drearily

The fear of losing Joe’s confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney corner at night staring drearily at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue.

A bereft landscape of sad browns and sepias of winter lay all about us, the marshland drearily protracting itself towards the wide river.

It seemed drearily suggestive, the last journey of this humble mortality, in all the splendid environment of the mountains, under the vast expansions of the aloof skies, in the mystic light of the unnoting moon.

Armistead Maupin's novels reflect more awareness of, and affection for, the texture of real life than As If After Sex. Maupin's characters may get into cartoonlike adventures, but they are real people. Torchia's characters do drearily familiar things, but they are ghosts.