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PARTISAN REVIEW
should receive a card from a certain Ellen and wonder who she is?
Any time you'd leave yourself open! Or, on the other hand, was it a
rather coy way of insinuating that you'd all but forgotten me? You
see, if you are willing to admit that I may have forgotten you, isn't
that another way of suggesting that you barely, barely manage to
remember me?
Nonsense! I know perfectly well that you've never forgotten
me.-But who are you, Shakespeare, that the smallest scrap of your
writing should be covered with commentaries? Enough of that.
Dear Ellen,
Do you remember me?
Indeed!
Joseph Feigenbaum
Dec. 22
It just occurred to me that while I wrote you at some length,
yesterday, I forgot the obvious subject of our correspondence-Xmas.
So
I'm writing you again to wish you a merry Xmas.
Yours,
J.
F.
P.S. Of course, I could just as well send a Xmas card.
Dec. 23
Dear Ellen,
Since I wrote to you twice, I might just as well have said some–
thing worth saying. After all, even if we have "forgotten" each other,
we still have our three years to look back on-years, may I add, all
the more interesting because we did not, in any way, spend them
together.
Please understand my motive.
If
it seems sentimental to you,
then you're a fool, and I've no fear of offending you when I say so.
And besides what can you do about it? Can you threaten to break
off our friendship? Can you threaten to stop writing?
As
if you would
ever write! You see, Ellen, by avoiding me you've put yourself com–
pletely in my power. But that's hardly worth pointing out.
Our whole meeting comes back to me. I remember that sum–
mer, no work, no friends, no conversation, the realization I was meant
