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
But that is not all I have to say to you; otherwise, I would have written an opinion piece instead of a novel. The reason that this is a novel instead of an essay has to do with the nature of the libertine and what the libertine—always a fictional entity—makes possible. As I’ve attempted to suggest, the libertine is not just enticing and law-breaking; the libertine is a sort of philosophical construct. I’ve put him before you here precisely because he does not live in the sense in which you or I do. He is a figment of democracy, an ever-flourishing side effect of its ideals, a ghost whistling through databases and hovering over staff meetings. But although the libertine is not real, the entities that give rise to him (institutions, the law) have a vital and domineering reality. Far from being crushed by these, Loudermilk thrives on their banal hypocrisy, attempting to make it his own, an engine that drives him, a weird form of sex. Loudermilk comes after Sade and has gone one infinitesimally small step further than that great master of our pleasures. Loudermilk is an American and thus takes great pride in seeking petty advantage. He is also—and here is his greatest achievement—normal rather than perverse and, most perverse of all, on the whole, fairly average.
LUCY IVES
2018
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
This novel was something like a decade in the writing (I’m afraid it may even have been more). My first thanks go to college friends at the Harvard Advocate for Sunday-morning conversations regarding poetry that somehow came to form the basis of this book. You all know who you are; I wrote this for you. I also want to thank Andrew Durbin and Katy Lederer, who read very early versions of the manuscript during a time when I was struggling to understand it. What is here is different, and that is partly because of you. Thank you both for so kindly reading and listening to me. Thanks, too, to Eliot House, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Millay Colony for offering much-needed space and time as I pieced together a final draft. I would like to note that the writers and editors of The Atlantic of 2003 and 2004 furnished detailed and indelible language I mined to create Harry’s poems—and that Abraham Adams heroically watched Roxanne. Special thanks to the i-Vigilante/Subaru Wars club-band for a certain beautiful holiday.
I am very grateful to Chris Clemans, who is a literary agent, yes, but also a sort of kindred spirit and one of the best readers I have ever encountered.