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 has the feeling he wants to walk backward. Of course, he is sitting down, but he can make out some kind of music. The music seems to be behind him. It’s not exactly a song, but that does not prevent Harry from wanting to hear it. The challenge is to get himself to fall. He can’t walk where he needs to go. It has to be an accident. Meaning is stale in every realm known to woman or man, and Harry cannot be where stale meaning is. He needs to sink back into that greenish-reddish veil through which he can see the gently pulsing backs of words, the frilled edges of sentences. The only way to get to the poem is to drop into a perfectly Harry-shaped shadow. Which is where he is, he sees, right now.
The paper is nearby and there is the radio.
Natural Bush
In the god-drenched eras of the past
He applied to seven schools, got into none.
He wrote so charmingly about the cunning
of underage girls, salads, heart-on-leotard emotion . . .
There was nothing crabbed about his declaration.
He was buying a country newspaper.
He would call and go, “Oh look, they’re breaking
bones! Oh gosh!
Feels like a lottery we’re running,
but the charity is (an) illusion.”
His dovish views, his catbird seat; he was
quick to apologize to veterans’ groups.
Gaze into his background.
He comes to us from Maryland.
—T. A. LOUDERMILK
Twenty-Six. A Break
Twenty-Six
A Break
“Harrison!” Loudermilk yells. “You’re making me proud! This is some good, weird shit.” It’s late afternoon and Loudermilk is back from wherever he has been for the past three days.
Harry had left the new poem, neatly printed out, on the kitchen bar. He was hoping, though he is not eager to admit it, for just such a response. Now he emerges from his cave and greets his long-lost comrade in literary treachery. “Hey,” he says.
“Only thing is”—Loudermilk is bending over the page with the Groucho robe slung around his shoulders, though underneath he wears what appears to be standard attire, no doubt obtained at some point in his travels (Are those women’s jeans?)—“this title? Like, maybe a tad much?” Loudermilk strokes his chin and ponders the ceiling. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “I just can’t tell! There’s something kinda eerie here, you know? I can feel it. Like, think about it, ‘Natural Bush,’ like, really, what the fuck is that? When has a person like me ever seen that? I’m saying”—Loudermilk stares at Harry—“you’re onto something, like, effing with them, jamming the old poetry radar! You’re challenging their god, you know?”
“All in a day’s work.”
“Only you would say that, Harrison. So what do you want me to do with it? I should submit it so these assmasters can scrape and grovel at your genius?”
“It’s not mine.”