AUGUST one of the people upon whom nothing is lost (H. James) 1. NOVEMBER the clear architecture / of the nerves (O Hara) 3

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1 NOTE BOOK: INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING xv AUGUST one of the people upon whom nothing is lost (H. James) 1 OCTOBER Nora inu (Stray Dog) (Kurosawa) 2 NOVEMBER the clear architecture / of the nerves (O Hara) 3 DECEMBER We Have to Be Careful about the Words We Use 4 JANUARY The Strength of Weak Gods the unconscious critical acumen of the reader (Trollope) 5 MARCH Partial Enchantments of the Quixote (2) 7 APRIL Paradise Bereft: The Social Elegy of De Quincey The Silent Correction Continues 12 MAY so true (Coleridge) Scars faded as flowers (Crane) 14 OCTOBER The Trouble with Aphorisms 16 NOVEMBER What is truth? said jesting Pilate (Bacon) Ciceronian Suburbs 19 DECEMBER Cold! (Gena Rowlands) 21

2 JANUARY Age does not improve us (Forster) 24 FEBRUARY The Afterlife of Moles In the society of their common danger his innocence might serve to protect him (Montaigne) But I shall see it reanimated (Walton) 27 vi MARCH The Unteachable Monkey, The Fables of Panchatantra, Indian Humor stippled Hopkins (Nabokov) 30 APRIL And I am out on a limb, and it is the arm of God (O Hara) They just look at me blankly (The Author s Mother) He began to repeat the same stories more than once a day (De Quincey) The mind, intractable thing (Moore) 34 MAY His jokes are no trifles (Blake) Ms. Arthur (Tina Fey) The Finer Reaches of Monotony 36 JULY So they groped and shuffled along (Grahame) That s wonderful, Sue. What are you studying? (Capote) I have loved you all my life! (Dickens) 40 AUGUST What hurts now, but might become love (Hollander) Forth, pilgrim, forth! (Chaucer) 41 SEPTEMBER I know where the wild things are (Nunokawa) bouquet of attention (Mailer) I am finally seeing, I was the one worth leaving (Postal Service) 45 OCTOBER Merleau-Ponty s readers can know him (Sartre) Why Do We Fall in Words? In Order to Avoid Falling Ill. 46 DECEMBER The Good Enough Elegy 48

3 1818. may be translated thus (Lewalski & Sabel) A written French that was at once rapid and cursive, quick to evoke images (Alain Badiou) 49 JULY Home Reparations 50 JULY What the hell can you learn from Las Vegas? (The Author s Mother: A Play in Eleven Lines) 52 DECEMBER Why this overmastering need to communicate with others? (Woolf) 53 vii JULY a service of love (De Quincey) 54 AUGUST The loss of all hope does not deprive human reality of its possibilities (Sartre) show of grief It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was (Wilde) 57 SEPTEMBER The Bondsman always labors in submission to the true master and Master, the fear of death (Robert B. Pippin) Telephone Directory, Heaven (Auden) She d take it all for fun if I didn t hurt her (G. Eliot) 61 OCTOBER gigantic broken revelations (G. Eliot) The secret discipline of imagination (Harry Berger Jr.) On pardonne tant que l on aime (La Rochefoucauld) (Why is it such agony to meet people at least sensitive people?) (Anne Morrow Lindbergh) 66 NOVEMBER I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things (Melville) There are only two things: Truth and lies (Kafka) 69 DECEMBER He glimpsed something generic and joyous, a pageant that would leave him behind (Updike) 70

4 JANUARY the law of his heart (Hegel) He somehow felt he was headed in the right direction (E. B. White) I track my uncontrollable footsteps (H. James) the masked pain of his bewilderment and solitude (Trilling) 76 viii FEBRUARY Add the case that you had loved her (Dickens) grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence (S. Johnson) The Human Part of Speech The Elements of Sympathy Tradition and the Individual Eavesdropper Notes toward Aphorisms 82 MARCH Money is a kind of poetry (Stevens) We Apologize for the Allusions a preponderance of loving affections (W. James) Conversion for Dummies a love stronger than any impulse that could have marred it (G. Eliot) a piece of classical debris which insists on being noticed (Maurice Natanson) 89 APRIL cleaning house and throwing out things you know you re going to miss (Pauline Kael) Why Write? (Sartre) Principia Mathematica how to talk to people you don t like (Salinger) aspects of the life of Jack Kennedy of which Lyndon Johnson was unaware (Robert Caro) a cry of pure pain (Mary McCarthy) 96 MAY Several people on the trip told me that I was an inspiration, which made me feel good (The Author s Mother) I think to myself: where have they gone? (Alfred Kazin) Noncomputable Memories Things answer only if they are questioned (Erwin Strauss) 100 JUNE Helping a Stranger Feel at Home In the vast literature of love (Updike) 102

5 4094. She touched she admitted she acknowledged the whole truth (Austen) To wait (Ashbery) The Near Enough Angel 106 JULY The Abstraction of Love Sentiment and Author, Uncertain The Trouble with Parting concealed from the reader (Northrop Frye) The Mirror Stages Beauty, Coming and Going Turn your fear into a safeguard (G. Eliot) and apply yourself to your books or your business (Thackeray) I dwell with a strangely aching heart (Frost) 115 ix AUGUST the dread fear of the unemployed that the world needed them no longer (Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.) the most surprising openness (Georg Simmel) the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings (G. Eliot) Surpassing Speech 120 SEPTEMBER Good God, man, get on with your story! (Uncle Arthur, as reported by Brendan Gill) Postseason Sentiment The voice reaching us from a great distance must find a place in the text (Michel de Certeau) Losing Voice to Regain It though now superseded in details (Angus Fletcher) the purpose of writing (Strunk and White) their breathless disorder (Sartre) Gods and Men A Will, Thus a Way 131 OCTOBER Beyond Display but yes, of course, I loved the evenings of New York (Camus) Come live with me, and be my love (Marlowe) Some Wounded Trees The Importance of Being Alone She was never wholly admirable (Woolf) Often, almost nightly (Nabokov) Bringing up Baby 142

6 x NOVEMBER This Side of the Dark Side Can You Hear Me Now? Weaker and Wiser The Care and Loving of a Gift your whole peculiar plot (Stevens) What is truth? (Bacon) Past the province of literature (Housman) I ll come and see you again, as soon as I can (Tolkien) He gave me clues to keep me afloat in the conversational stream (qtd. by Erving Goffman) poor Marcus Aurelius (Pierre Hadot) 152 DECEMBER her endless power of surrender (H. James) Not a creature was stirring (Clement Clarke Moore) The Portal s Tale The Life of Love a proficiency in telephoning and telegraphing (Wharton) an extraordinary mildness (Auden) Mine would, sir, were I human (Shakespeare) Make it up as we go along (Talking Heads) 161 JANUARY whom I hopelessly love (O Hara) Midlife Morning my dreams are not calm (De Quincey) 164 FEBRUARY Finding My Picture of Dorian Gray I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each (T. S. Eliot) I was part of the nastiness now (Chandler) When What You Say Comes Out Just Right From Wary to Wonder Having survived entirely your own youth (Merrill) prevented him from burning the difficult beginnings (Updike) Cold Gathering 172 MARCH My Mother, and Welcome to Her! difficult marvels (Merrill) vanished early (Austen) I have now at last become a writer only (Fitzgerald) Something Given from Somewhere Hidden busy seeking for otters (Boswell) 177

7 4386. this penetrative suggestion of life (Pater) Making Up in the Middle of the Night The scars were of different ages (Darwin) 179 APRIL I have promises to keep (Frost) Self-Doubt for Adults for the party (Austen) compelled her to grace (Hardy) impulses which she had not known before (G. Eliot) There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men (Wilde) Reserve Army of Rescuers The Charmed Cycle Only he and his opponent knew that he was being destroyed (G.L.S.) Self-Reliance for Commoners What to Love funny (O Hara) 187 xi JUNE an endlesse moniment (Spenser) for poetry was all written before time was (Emerson) What they made of his lectures is not known (Peter Singer) And in short, I was afraid (T. S. Eliot) the pleasure of giving respect (Tobias Wolff) 190 JULY Of Bragging writing at tension s limit (Bolaño) almost converted (G. Eliot) as if I, not they, were leaving (Merrill) up again old heart! (Emerson) irrevocably a poet (Samuel Johnson) speechless wonder (F. Creuzer) not mentioned because it is the whole of the story (Empson) our togetherness (Auden) an agreeable melancholy (Hume) Books of Revelation (Class Notes) Dreams advise (Milton) Over My Head 204 AUGUST A Need for Gardens (Richard Brautigan) Love Enough to Be Kind (Barthes) 207

8 4456. without losing his reverence (Emerson) his sincerities are elegiac (Richard Poirier) Make gentle the life of this world (Aeschylus) Two Cheers for Vagueness Continuous Diary But in the movie, died (Updike) It s the kingdom of heaven (Camus) the small band of true friends (Austen) The end of art is peace (Heaney) our Puritan anxiety (Anne Morrow Lindbergh) 219 xii SEPTEMBER Nature s first green is gold (Frost) her lovely, deliberate blandness (Vidal) Men who die childless are denied an ancestor shrine (Jack Goody) For our vines have tender grapes (Song of Solomon) Sincerity (Auerbach) Fallings from us, vanishings (Wordsworth) Love those for whom the world is real (Merrill) Then, all of a sudden, I started to cry (Salinger) a God to thank (Fitzgerald) 233 OCTOBER It s Different from the Ones in Peru I cannot be mended (Stevens) Where every paradox means wonder (Merrill) Self-Pastoral how he got out of the room (G. Eliot) The Strangeness of Tears We are going to be in for trouble (Lillian Hellman) where nobody was looking (Sontag) Coming up Empty It was now too late and too far to go back (Dickens) note (Barthes) where lost was found (Merrill) Loving on Time lost for lacke of telling (Spenser) Thanks for That so right (Ellmann) Street-Level Closeness 249 NOVEMBER Waiting for Light 251

9 5043. Playing Fair with Your Feelings (I too in this dictum) (Kafka) Coming and Going Another Country hope (Camus) sure as tomorrow morning (Hopkins) a perfect edition of my works (Pope) full of pain (Milton) Making It Through From Ritual to Romance pathless ways into happy ones (Ruskin) Voir Dire 267 xiii DECEMBER The Good Enough Beginning A Hundred Million Billion Sonnets (Queneau) He saw himself as a ludicrous figure (Joyce) like a tree of tears (Merrill) Rage Comes Home to Roost if nobody can understand it? (G. Eliot) burning boy (Bishop) allies in the fight (Trilling) Part for the Whole News of the Day Somebody loves us all (Bishop) real religious feeling (Wittgenstein) Seeing off People You Love Old and New Friends Lost and Found Now Voyager (Whitman, H. Crane, C. Robinson) 284 JANUARY Fool for Love Keeping It Public How can anyone want such things? (Bishop) Mint Car Questions of Rescue for One only (Browning) All for Love I m So Much Less Sure of Myself Now Than I Used to Be something understood (Herbert) Notes as Novel One Step at a Time Finding Your Way through Fear 298

10 FEBRUARY Runaway Human Landscape Interpretation of Dreams 303 MARCH How to Live 305 APRIL Robert Frost 308 xiv MAY Fantasy Fatherhood Love Story 311 JUNE Then I Don t Feel So Bad 312 JULY Revelation Roulette Why We Teach Good Enough for Good-bye 319 INDEX 321