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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

Harry knows, intuitively, that this is the right kind of response to be getting—that this means something, he’s done well—and he wants to dig further into this effect. He wants to solicit pleasure and this other thing, which is kind of like some form of fear. He has mixed his registers and included some ominous references to historical violence as well as contemporary war. He’s been thinking a lot about men. He worked in a few neologisms as well, which, his listening has informed him, is a thing that really gets his audience going.

Even Don Hillary, grumpus numero uno, special agent of the fugue state, was not entirely without respect for Harry’s, which is to say Loudermilk’s, debut effort, and seemed willing to forget about the first session’s rancorous exchange. Hillary murmurs, “There’s something kinda . . . mystic about this thing.” It’s not the most original observation, but it also isn’t Hillary telling Loudermilk to go frig himself in the dick with a freshly sharpened number 2 pencil. This is a pensive Don, slowly licking drooping literary chops, savoring the pedagogical present, wondering aloud about Loudermilk’s motivations. “Who is this ‘Writing Teacher’?” Hillary asks no one in particular. “What does this guy want?”

Twenty. Allegory

Twenty

Allegory

L’Origine du monde, The Origin of the World was painted by Gustave Courbet at the commission of Khalil-Bey, a Turkish-Egyptian diplomat and playboy, in 1866, probably from a pornographic photograph. Small, approximately twenty-one by eighteen inches, the painting was, as per various accounts in the prose of local decadents and critics, reputed to have hung in Khalil-Bey’s vast pink bathroom, veiled by a green curtain that might be drawn aside to amaze the eyes of the fashionable and wicked. Khalil-Bey, who was reported to spend fourteen thousand francs per day on his own wicked lifestyle, fell out of fashion and cash in late 1867, departing Paris for Constantinople.