BooksBarbecue
Back Loudermilk
Chapters (60)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Personae
  4. I: Early Days
  5. One. Control
  6. Two. Doubt
  7. Three. Fate
  8. Four. Same
  9. Five. Fine Arts
  10. Six. In Loco Parentis
  11. Seven. Settling
  12. Eight. Neighbors
  13. Nine. Prospects
  14. Ten. The Lucky
  15. Eleven. Instruction
  16. Twelve. Same
  17. Thirteen. This Is a Pipe
  18. Fourteen. This Is Not a Pipe
  19. Fifteen. The Reason
  20. Sixteen. That Person
  21. Seventeen. Predictably
  22. II: Writing Teacher
  23. Eighteen. Early Poems
  24. Nineteen. Motivation
  25. Twenty. Allegory
  26. Twenty-One. Grief
  27. Twenty-Two. A Portrait
  28. Twenty-Three. Veils
  29. Twenty-Four. Soft Power
  30. Twenty-Five. Lists
  31. Twenty-Six. A Break
  32. Twenty-Seven. Elsewhere
  33. Twenty-Eight. Custom
  34. Twenty-Nine. Parity
  35. Thirty. Fortune
  36. III: Volta
  37. Thirty-One. Images
  38. Thirty-Two. A Very Interesting Young Man
  39. Thirty-Three. Letters
  40. Thirty-Four. We Prefer to See Ourselves Living
  41. Thirty-Five. Love
  42. Thirty-Six. The Iceberg
  43. IV: Your Best Reader
  44. Thirty-Seven. A Novelist
  45. Thirty-Eight. In Advance of the Broken Arm
  46. Thirty-Nine. Their Penultimate Encounter
  47. Forty. Détente
  48. Forty-One. Worlds
  49. Forty-Two. Recognition
  50. Forty-Three. Persistence
  51. Forty-Four. And Then
  52. Forty-Five. Mingling
  53. Forty-Six. You
  54. Forty-Seven. Persona
  55. Forty-Eight. Est et Non
  56. Forty-Nine. The Author
  57. Epilogue
  58. Afterword: The Libertine
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. About the Authors

The writing teacher is not sure if he’s heard of this sort of problem before. If a piece of writing does not begin, then does it even exist—or, for that matter, matter? It annoys him because this isn’t a problem pertaining to writing; this is a problem pertaining to a particular kind of person and he’s sick of these kinds of problems as well as these people, not least of all because he’d like to leave his wife.

But the student is not leaving, and her proffered writing is also still here.

The writing teacher scoots the paper closer to his side of the desk.

He reads:

A.   While I was still in Paris, I dreamed about my father for the first time in years. And then, through the eeriest of coincidences, I actually saw him, though at no point had I sought him out. It was in the Musée d’Orsay. It was my last day in town. I was standing in Room 20, on the rez-de-chaussée, staring, as my repulsively ill luck would have it, into the pinkish cleft of L’Origine du monde, Courbet’s idealized depiction of a female crotch. Then, as my eyes moved across the surface of the painting to the frame, and as I took a step back, I turned to see, exiting the room, a man I hadn’t noticed previously. It was him, unmistakably him, though we hadn’t spoken in years. He passed through the doorway in a white scarf.

B.   While I was still in Paris, I dreamed about my father for the first time in years. And then, through the eeriest of coincidences, I actually saw him, though at no point had I sought him out. It was in the Musée d’Orsay. It was my last day in town. I was standing in Room 20, on the rez-de-chaussée, staring, as my repulsively ill luck would have it, into the pinkish cleft of L’Origine du monde, Courbet’s idealized depiction of a female crotch. Then, as my eyes moved across the surface of the painting to the frame, and as I took a step back, I turned to see, exiting the room, a man I hadn’t noticed previously. It was him, unmistakably him, though we hadn’t spoken in years. He passed through the doorway in a black scarf.