ALAN LELCHUK
607
thought, to reflect. Then he began, "Look, I once loved a woman, and never
married her, for the wrong reason. I even gave her up, for another woman
whom I didn't feel passionate about, but who had the right social standing. Is
that good enough?" He half grinned, derisively, at himsel£
I took that in, tried to register it, observing his tweedy jacket sleeve
next to my cruddy redblack flannel shirt. "How about messing up in a cheap,
vulgar way?" I put, trying to edge through the protective fence he was con–
structing for my benefit. "Where you fail yourself in a, a-"
"All the time, son," he said easily. ''I'm a writer, remember. That's
what you do as a writer, in one way or another."
A writer? "I thought you just wrote literary criticism stuff?"
He laughed, happily now. "That, too." Then he seemed to sigh, re-
membering something, and stood up, wearily.
I stood with him, feeling how Green-street large he was.
"Well, are you ready for another book?"
"Sure, though I've still got another hundred pages or so of
Augie
March,
and then there's the poetry of Rimbaud for me to get to. But that's
not too much."
"Here, come with me." He proceeded to circle round the aisles until he
came to the M's, and there, two bookcases in, found a book, and handed it to
me.
"Pretty thick again," I observed, handling the battered book, and read
aloud the title.
"OfHuman B01'lfinge.
Gosh, how'd he think of that?"
"Spinoza thought ofit for him," Mr. Barrett explained. "The title ofone
of his books of ethics. Look at the pictures if you get bored with the text," he
smiled.
''I'll try to do both, actually," peeking at the shaded pen and ink
illustrations.
"Good. And we'll talk further. You should think more carefully why you
like or dislike this book. Maybe make a small list of things? And you should
think about college, too, you know."
"Really? Well, maybe, after sailing around a bit."
He nodded, and walked on ahead, with me following.
At the stairway he stopped. "She was Jewish, that woman. Like you, I
expect."
"Huh? Yeah,
I
am."
"And
I
was somewhat ashamed of that." He faced me squarely. "I
was a prig, a Waspish prig. Your father, Polish or Russian? And an immi–
grant?"
"Yes, a Russian immigrant." Not the right moment to ask him the
meaning of that odd phrase.
