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
Anton Beans is slouching his way to Building 109. He has to pick up the packet for next Tuesday’s class. This would be a dramatically less irksome task if it weren’t for some of the other individuals Beans will have to confront across the seminar table once the weekend has come to a close. Foremost in Beans’s mind is, of course, the newcomer, Loudermilk. This person isn’t a real writer, and Beans would like very much to know what Loudermilk is doing in the Seminars, besides, for example, living a subsidized oversexed lifestyle that it’s better not to even begin to visualize.
Just so Loudermilk keeps his distance from Marta: If he can do that, then Beans doesn’t care. But let him start currying favor with Marta Hillary, then Beans and Loudermilk will have words.
Beans grinds his teeth crossing the threshold of Building 109. He glowers at the oversized oil portrait of Rainer Dodds, founder of the Seminars, encountering Henry Ford amid rolling fields. The two giants clasp hands beneath a candied sun.
Beans pauses before the cubbies where the new packets appear once they have been photocopied by the all-female administrative staff. He searches the labels and finds his workshop. He selects one packet from the center of the warm pile.
Flipping through, Beans exits. He’s hot and his shoulders are too tight. On the first square of sidewalk he reads something that stops him in his tracks.
II: Writing Teacher
II
WRITING TEACHER
Writing Teacher
The person was a civilian status.
He had no part in the creation
Of a mass grave near his home.
Like being in a cool, dim Easter
Basket, a gift for the unblinking self,
A one-way mirror was produced
And held up to the soul.
In an age of collapsed distances
There’s no such thing as might
Or day. He orchestrated
Their emotional surrender
With roving satellites
And hoods. The person was
Advised to disappear
And he has said he would—
To live among the best
Communicators, in a crackling
Mural of persuasion.
—T. A. LOUDERMILK
Eighteen. Early Poems
Eighteen
Early Poems
When Harry was younger by a lot, very young, there was a woman living next door, and whenever she would knock on the wall, Harry had to knock right back. Harry had been staying with his grandmother, but his mother said she couldn’t stand it anymore, she had to have him with her. So Harry was alone while his mother went to work at Tops.
When Harry was a kid, he often thought about Tops, the word and the name. He was always alone, then, in the first apartment. He imagined one day his mother would come home and say, “Harry, it’s Tops time!” And together they would climb into the air.