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
Harry was laboring under the delusion that it might be possible to sneak up on the setting, eye the fauna, blend. The thought of descrying Loudermilk in his natural milieu hadn’t been entirely un-intriguing, either. What did it look like when Loudermilk was “out there”? How great was the liberty of Loudermilk these days, really?
Harry is willing to bet that it is pretty great.
However, now Harry’s arm is clamped in the clammy clamp of Anton Beans’s good hand, and more than this, Harry seems to have been fully apprehended by the thought and belief of Anton Beans, meaning that Harry has become a sort of literal and material idée fixe as far as Beans is concerned.
Beans drags Harry—aka, the concept of Harry, plus Harry’s body, to which said concept is attached—downstairs.
It’s all Harry can do to keep himself upright, not to mention his teeth in his face rather than knocked out by the dowels of the intricate banister.
Music surges and thuds. Harry’s vision is striated, a confusing mist. The music is louder and louder. “I’m. In. Hea-ea-ven,” sings Mariah Carey. Harry allows himself to go limp. Moist bodies brush revoltingly against him.
Somewhere, perhaps even very near to him, Anton Beans is instructing people to get out of his way. Beans seems to know where he is going. Beans is bellowing something about turn off the music. Beans is possibly roaring himself hoarse. He keeps yelling this command regarding the music until other writers on the floor, believing that something of actual import may be going on, take up the chant, too.
The music dies.
Harry is a faded flower, a dried squid. He is draped limply across the somewhat-more-solid form of Anton Beans. He is tiny and sans volume and awaits oblivion.
“You,” Anton Beans is saying, by which Harry assumes Anton Beans means Harry. “Yes, you,” Anton Beans repeats.
Harry’s eyes are closed. He imagines himself stretched out upon a sacrificial altar.
“Moi?” inquires someone.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. I’m talking to you.”
“No offense, dude, but moi is a little indisposed. What up with the jams?”
It is, as it was always going to be, him. It’s Loudermilk. Harry wills himself to shrivel further. His eyes are sealed and he pretends that he is, in addition, dead.
“Shut up,” Beans rumbles. The room, if it was not particularly noisy before, becomes pristinely still. “I’ve brought you something.”
“Thanks, man! What exactly might that be?”
“You know,” says Beans, “what I’m talking about. You know who this is.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You know what’s about to happen here.”
Loudermilk gives this a beat. “Uh, you’re going to get the fuck out of my grill?”
There is a smattering of giggles from the crowd. Loudermilk has his adherents.