Golf courses are cemeteries

"What dit it mean that Adletsky and Dame Siggy had reached a great age, that they were honored as multibillionaire Jews, and that they were what Chicagoans call 'notables'? Or else, in the language of myth, 'heavy-money Yids', representatives of the powers of darkness and the secret rulers of the world?

Much later in the day, talking to Amy about Mr and Mrs Adletsky, I said, 'Okay, they're in retirement. They've got nothing but leisure, and it's pastime with them to bargain with Bodo Heisinger, to chaffer and haggle. Early this morning, they left the house and rode downtown through the blizzard in their strech limo. They sat in the luxurious salon interior. Then for two hours they fenced Madge and Bodo... There was no occasion to look outside -to see the people whose mad doings the papers are always reporting...'

'What are you out to prove, Harry, with an introduction like this' Amy said.

'There is no leisure for anybody,' I said. 'Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemeteries. Adletsky would never stoop to golf. He was right to wheel and deal as he had done from the age of two till ninety-two."

Saul Bellow, The actual.