Halo, at the farther end of the library, was talking to a short, heavily built young man with a head cropped like a German Bursche, whom she introduced as Gratz Blemer. Blemer was blunt but affable. "I guess we can't read each other—anyway, you'll never flounder through a morass like my last book—but I'm glad of the chance of a talk. Writing's always a mannerism; talk's the only real thing, isn't it?" He spoke with a slight German accent, oiled by Jewish gutturals, and Vance, while attracted by his good-nature and simplicity, wondered for the thousandth time why American novels were so seldom written by Americans. He would have liked to go off into a corner with Blemer and put a series of questions about his theory of his art; but other people came up. There was little O'Fallery, whose short story, "Limp Collars," had taken the Pulsifer Prize on which Tarrant had counted for Vance; Frenside, gruffly benevolent, Rebecca Stram (who was exhibiting Vance's bust in the clay at a show of "Tomorrowists" got up by that enterprising industry, "Storecraft"), and others, men and women, unknown to Vance, or known only by reputation, but all sounding the same note of admiring interest and intelligent comprehension… .