Renata Adler, Speedboat, 1971, Chapter 7. The Agency
"You are no longer expounding a proposition. You are having a tantrum. Simon's psychiatrist and I pursued our tantrum, in duet, all evening long. The horse might have two natural gaits, the Charleston and the entrechat, for all it mattered. I meant, I didn't like the man and I thought that, within twenty years, his profession would have vanished, leaving no artifacts of any interest except a dazed memory of fifty years of ineffective and remunerative peculation in the work of a single artist, Freud. I also meant I didn't like his flowered shirt. He meant, I think, he didn't like me either."
peculate |ˈpekyəˌlāt|verb [ with obj. ] formalembezzle or steal (money, esp. public funds): the people accused them of having peculated the public money.DERIVATIVESpeculation |ˌpekyəˈlāSHən|noun,peculator |-ˌlātər|nounORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from Latin peculat- ‘embezzled,’ from the verbpeculari (related to peculium ‘property’).
