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
Beans is unfazed. “I’d like to do that, I really would,” he says, “but unfortunate circumstances prevent me from being able to do so. Instead of getting, as you put it, ‘the fuck out of’ your ‘grill,’ I’m going, instead, to get further and far more intimately ‘up’ into it, because I and everyone else here tonight require an explanation. For example”—Beans begins shaking Harry loose from his shoulder—“who this is. Who is this person, Troy Loudermilk? You can’t honestly say that you’ve never seen him before.”
Harry hears the mutters of the crowd. They remark upon this person’s familiarity, though really he is difficult to place. And so pale!
“I don’t really—” Loudermilk begins to say.
“Oh yes you do.” Beans gives Harry a more pronounced shake, causing Harry’s eyes to pop inadvertently open.
“I have no idea who—” Loudermilk avers, as his face comes, as ever, gorgeously into focus. Harry finds himself staring into the copper eyes of his life’s great frenemy.
“Hi,” Harry whispers.
Loudermilk does not say anything.
Forty-Seven. Persona
Forty-Seven
Persona
Lizzie knows she is late. She has been, after all, just the littlest tiny bit busy. She’s a creative type, and one can’t be everywhere at once, and when inspiration strikes, as they say. And she’s proud to have at last completed her artwork. However, there is no way she was prepared for the party to have already ended before she arrived! There is what seems at first like complete silence inside the Delta Psi Kappa house. Lizzie very nearly begins to cry. Then she hears a voice. The voice is coming from farther back inside the building, and Lizzie decides that she will walk toward it. This is how Lizzie comes upon a scene that she will later describe to herself as the supreme all-time competition of the world.
Everyone in the Seminars, all the current students, are gathered in this room Lizzie thinks was originally intended for something more serious and elegant than the use (party rentals) to which it is currently being applied. It has all this carved stuff and seems kind of, how can Lizzie put this, evil? But the Seminars people are at this point behaving in potentially surprising ways. Like, they aren’t awkwardly rubbing up against one another but are rather standing in this sort of shocked formation, like they are anticipating witnessing an impromptu execution. The little hairs at the back of Lizzie’s neck come to attention. Also, and perhaps more important, at the center of the circle are Loudermilk and this asshole self-promoter second-year poet Lizzie thinks is named Anton and then, in a final shocker, there is a very wan Harry.
Harry! Lizzie thinks.