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 six. His mother said that he could go to school the next year but then this never happened. It seemed like they went outside about once a week. Sometimes they went to the library.
Harry read a children’s book about a young girl who goes driving with her mother, and they pack chicken in newspaper to eat along the way. The mother wears a scarf in her hair.
Harry listened to the radio because it was a fun game to write down the words. There was an advertisement about fur storage in Albany.
Harry felt, when he was writing down the words, that he was doing something that brought him closer to people, not to the people on the radio but to the idea of people. It was like a secret about human living that he was whispering to himself over and over as he formed each letter, as he devoted each letter to a complete word.
There was a crumbling paperback dictionary and Harry knew how to use it.
Harry drew words from the sound. He pulled the words from the extent of sound, from sound’s event, someone speaking.
When Harry was seven, Harry’s mother started asking him to tell her about what he was reading. She brought him paperbacks from Tops to read and tell her about.
Harry’s mother did not like to read. She said that Harry’s talent was a testament to what a trick it is anybody makes anyone feel that school is the answer. She said that she was glad that she could do something for her son. She found Harry some old copies of Reader’s Digest at the Salvation Army.
When Harry was eight, Harry’s grandmother showed up for a surprise visit. She looked exactly the way she looked in a certain photograph, but for some reason Harry did not know her on sight. It took her over an hour’s cajolement to convince him to let her in the front door. When she did come inside she started crying. Harry was afraid and went into the other room. His grandmother followed him and sat beside him and told him that the only reason she was crying was that he was so handsome. Harry’s grandmother said that Harry had grown into such a handsome boy. That he was so handsome on the outside must mean that he was handsome on the inside, too. Harry was still afraid, but he did not say anything or try to move away from her again. After this, Harry had to go to school. It was not that he avoided the other children so much as he was so satisfied by the act of observing them from a distance that actually speaking to them seemed somehow wrong.
The teachers at the school moved Harry into the fourth grade, then the seventh grade.