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
Someone threw yogurt at the back of Harry’s head and he stopped going to the cafeteria. During recess and lunch he sat in a locked bathroom stall and read.
Things were worse at the next school. Harry saw boys trap a girl under the bleachers beside the running track. A messenger from a central clique approached him and informed him that he should begin praying to god every night in hopes that, for his own sake, he would die soon.
A woman came to the house to make sure Harry was going to school. Her hair was coarse and crimped.
Harry began to cultivate unobtrusiveness in himself. The school was the kind of place where discipline was in such short supply that Harry’s absence from certain nonacademic classes and occasions of assembly was not just overlooked but privately condoned by a quorum of the better-seasoned staff. They knew what was waiting for him at the area high.
The woman with the crimped hair retired. A new, stout woman came.
Harry’s mother got another job and they moved to a small house. Harry had his own room.
Early on, the stout woman suggested the idea of community college classes. Harry was bagging groceries at Tops. He could afford one class a semester. In the summer he did lawn work, and he could afford two classes. He got his GED his sophomore year after someone stomped on his foot in the hall between classes and broke two of his toes.
The stout woman helped Harry apply for a scholarship. Harry took out a small loan, which he has since deferred.
Harry was fifteen the year he went to college. Harry’s mother was thirty-one.
Nineteen. Motivation
Nineteen
Motivation
Harry mentally replays a conversation of earlier in the week, when he requested to know if Loudermilk had ever read Tristes tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Harry pointed out that if Loudermilk hadn’t yet laid eyes on this classic he probably should, because the book contains some pretty relevant notes for their project, to which Loudermilk was like, “What, dude?”
Harry repeated, Tristes tropiques, englishing for Loudermilk’s benefit. He cited a paragraph in which Lévi-Strauss contends that the main function of writing in human history has been as a tool of enslavement. Harry said, “It makes you think.” Harry wonders now just exactly what he’d meant by this.
Harry’s also been—here literally—replaying the remarkable documentary tapes Loudermilk brings back from workshop, how on week one you hear Loudermilk come into the class and the first thing he says is, “Apologies, sir.”
He’s late.
“I don’t usually let in stragglers,” a man, the instructor, rumbles.
“Completely.” Loudermilk moves into the room. “Understood.”