Confined to an ashbin, Hamm's mother announces her deeply Beckettian view of life: "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that."

In the interview, Mr. Duke told Mr. Fields that Jews "deserve to go into the ashbin of history . . . I hate to be Machiavellian, but I would suggest that you don't really talk much about National Socialism . . . publicly, too much.

Late nights and insufficient sleep, added to the need of a shave, always made him look like something that should have been swept up and taken away to the ash-bin.

To Charlene, and to all of the people attending War as Text, it was self-evident that the veteran who filed the lawsuit was the very worst kind of human being--just the sort they had gathered together to debunk, burn in effigy, and sweep into the ash-bin of posthistorical discourse.