Chapters (60)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Personae
- I: Early Days
- One. Control
- Two. Doubt
- Three. Fate
- Four. Same
- Five. Fine Arts
- Six. In Loco Parentis
- Seven. Settling
- Eight. Neighbors
- Nine. Prospects
- Ten. The Lucky
- Eleven. Instruction
- Twelve. Same
- Thirteen. This Is a Pipe
- Fourteen. This Is Not a Pipe
- Fifteen. The Reason
- Sixteen. That Person
- Seventeen. Predictably
- II: Writing Teacher
- Eighteen. Early Poems
- Nineteen. Motivation
- Twenty. Allegory
- Twenty-One. Grief
- Twenty-Two. A Portrait
- Twenty-Three. Veils
- Twenty-Four. Soft Power
- Twenty-Five. Lists
- Twenty-Six. A Break
- Twenty-Seven. Elsewhere
- Twenty-Eight. Custom
- Twenty-Nine. Parity
- Thirty. Fortune
- III: Volta
- Thirty-One. Images
- Thirty-Two. A Very Interesting Young Man
- Thirty-Three. Letters
- Thirty-Four. We Prefer to See Ourselves Living
- Thirty-Five. Love
- Thirty-Six. The Iceberg
- IV: Your Best Reader
- Thirty-Seven. A Novelist
- Thirty-Eight. In Advance of the Broken Arm
- Thirty-Nine. Their Penultimate Encounter
- Forty. Détente
- Forty-One. Worlds
- Forty-Two. Recognition
- Forty-Three. Persistence
- Forty-Four. And Then
- Forty-Five. Mingling
- Forty-Six. You
- Forty-Seven. Persona
- Forty-Eight. Est et Non
- Forty-Nine. The Author
- Epilogue
- Afterword: The Libertine
- Acknowledgments
- About the Authors
At last Beans sees. There amid the lashing, thrusting bodies is the golden head of Loudermilk. Loudermilk is frowning with eyes shut, engrossed in absorbing the pelvic attention lavished on him by two female fiction first-years, who have made of their Adonis a human sandwich meat. It is distressingly typical, but Beans wills himself not to focus on this aspect of the situation. It’s important to keep his mind on political task, not to be distracted by taste. What amazes Beans is how negligible the effect of Loudermilk’s public humiliation in workshop has been. Nobody seems to care that everyone’s idol has been brought low. Marta said something shockingly vapid about how we all have “our days,” and no one else appears to be reflecting on what has happened—at all. And this is why Beans must take action.
He has made inroads with the minion. Harry, he believes this person’s name is. So far, so good, but nothing will be settled as far as Beans is concerned without a full reveal—
Forty-Five. Mingling
Forty-Five
Mingling
Clare has arrived at “prom” and things already look fairly debauched, with a strong chance of “meat stink plus portable bidets” before midnight.
Clare squeezes through the vestibule, which is crowded with Seminars people deliberating about how best to walk outside to have a smoke, an undertaking rendered somewhat more complex by quantities of Everclear plus Kool-Aid dwelling redly in translucent cups. People are sloppy, and in her radical sobriety Clare is anxious.
A Chicagolander named Zach—famed for his father’s unusual career as first a stand-up comedian, then state senator, a trajectory explored to withering ends in Zach’s own short fiction—seizes Clare’s shoulder. His eyes have this diagonal softness. He wants to take this opportunity, i.e., intoxication, to convey to Clare his newfound respect for her writing. “The Origin of the World” was really something and he’s sorry not to have acknowledged her earlier. She should feel free to share her work with him outside of class.
Clare uses her eyes to convey that she so very much gets it. In spite of herself, she’s flattered.
Zach manifests relief. He is about to say something about his difficult childhood but is abruptly pulled outside by two bigger men Clare recognizes as second-year poets. She hears the phrase “local talent.”
Clare moves on.
She will bear witness to whatever the center of this thing is. This will be close enough to having had a “good time” to justify the trip.
She goes down a hallway that is half rotting wood and half moldering paper printed with a design of interlocking spools of thread. Music increases in volume.
Clare enters the room with dancing. It is a confusing chamber—she exits quickly.