My landlady also had a swine

who got along with Freud just fine;

for all sorts of reasons—

in vaginal and anal seasons—

now it snuffles psyches.

Cordially, W. N.

A folk poet, a genuine German . . .

A. is surprised when Witte takes him aside after dinner. “Very interesting, what you had to say about problems of social structures. Could give a new direction to my advertising department, as Herr von Rönnekamp suggested. What we need are young people with ideas. Why not drop by day after tomorrow, Thursday the ninth—okay? Thursday is the ninth, isn’t it?—so drop by my office at eleven sharp.”

• • •

He’s my opposite in every respect: light-footed where I’m lumbering, elegant where I’m dull and average, suave where I’m awkward, nimble where I’m clumsy. He’s at home in any milieu but identifies with none, speaks every language, puts a good face on everything, isn’t intimidated by anything, and is always relaxed, with the nil admirari attitude of a sophisticate. Where I’m cold, he’s fiery; where I get excited, he stays cool. He’s indifferent where I’m sentimental, and soulful where I’m apathetic . . . He’s also proud, but from a sort of humbleness, not from hubris—

in a word, he’s the spitting image of the me I dream up in literature.

• • •

Painfully awkward argument with Scherping: All of a sudden he finds our expectation of having made a literary discovery in A. if not unfounded, then at least exaggerated. “Take for example that treatment—right?—the one that I, uh, you know. . .” (suggestive bleat of laughter), “. . . what I mean is, it may well be that in an—emotively speaking—somewhat overheated environment, it struck me as something extraordinary—and you felt the same way, you’ve got to admit—anyway, on a second or third reading, it seems a bit thin to justify the assumption we’ve discovered some goddamn genius.” His gaze becomes restless as it always does when he senses an occasion to expose his real or imagined weaknesses (a strange sort of exhibitionism not mentioned by Sacher-Masoch). “Once again, of course, proving myself the lowbrow you rightly think I am, but I’d like to stress that I became a publisher—and not a potato dealer—from a certain higher aspiration. And although I may be below par intellectually, at least I don’t want all my motives to be seen as simply those of a business type focused solely on profits, even if I don’t neglect the financial part. With all due respect to great literature, it seems to me we shouldn’t invest blindly in something that at best holds promise of talent but with a fairly uncertain ending . . .”