Preface (by a friend of the late author)

(after Lamb)

This poor soul, who for several years had been in decline, is finally gone from us.
To be honest, it had long since been time. Whatever occasional pleasure we may have taken in his presence was at best wearing thin; and 61 years is more than enough to endure such a nonexistence.

I can now admit that what many of us suspected about his refusal to write was indeed well-founded. If in his personal letters he remained consistently and engagingly himself (how abandoned and resounding were those letters!), in his very few and scattered public works he chose affectation and alienation – or most often, simply silence. Arguing an unnatural predilection for perfection, or a false humility for his lack of knowledge and skill, he would make almost noble his inaction. In truth, he was just lazy. Death, for him, must no doubt be a familiar state.

My late friend was in all a rather mundane sort. He allowed very few of us to get close enough to know him well and those who were allowed his intimacy often wondered of what worth it was. No one understood him (though some deemed that his charm); and I am not certain that at all times he quite understood himself. His protracted tirades on any subject (it little mattered to him what it was) were artful in their embellishment and excess, though when pressed finally to make some clear point of his raving, he would answer with a thankful hush. Humor was often his ambition, though seldom his effect. When he was funny, it was usually of an offensive sort, producing peals of laughter from him, but embarrassed smiles and an excuse to leave for anyone caught around him. If I needed to find him at a party, I could simply follow to its source a line of people making their exit from a room, and there he would be, curled in convulsions, alone. Perhaps from an awareness of his social incompetence, or perhaps from his inveterate avoidance of anything which demanded even the slightest thought or effort, he was always more comfortable with one person in private than with many in public. Those few of us who were his intimates, therefore, seldom knew each other; or if we did know each other, would not have guessed a common knowledge of him (never do I recall his name coming up in a conversation where he was not present – and most often dominating). Though he had as few enemies as friends (he often remarked on the advantages of distancing himself from others), should he decide not to like someone, he made certain that the dislike became mutual. If his wit failed to offend (a rare event), he could easily fall back on his past, a topic which, once he had raised the nostalgic specter, would bore even the most polite to tears. No one knew for certain exactly what his past had been, for he was never consistent in the telling of it (when confronted with some contradiction in his story, he would shrug it off, and claim that this was, after all, his past, and he could do with it as he pleased); what was consistent, though, in all of his tales of the past was its ennui – in the end, it didn’t matter much whether he was in fact a Boy Scout in Duluth or a Junior Achiever in Wichita; the point was that it was always boring, and one had to wonder why he went on about it so. In truth, he seemed to prefer the dull to the dramatic. When informed that some person of note, a highly placed politician, say, or a scholar of repute, would be appearing and available for introduction and discussion, his response was a curt, so what? He understood and appreciated the allure of the celebrity, but considered it suspect in its obsequiousness. His preference lay with his own chosen ragged regiment of acquaintances, an ill-begot assortment of society’s half-wits, surviving in the margins, ever in danger of falling off the edge – it’s more interesting, he would say, when there’s nothing at stake. He was lavish in his meals and diversions, aiming always to the other side of abstemiousness. His greatest embarrassments were, indeed, the result of indulgence in his various vices – but vices, he claimed, which kept him always aware of the possibility of virtue. How often we heard his invocation for temperance as he slid helplessly from his chair, and under the table.

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my old friend is departed. He had taken in his later days to an uncharacteristic strain of remorse. In our walks along the river, he began to notice how many people failed to recognize him. “No one,” he muttered, “would think twice if I were to throw myself into the water.” Once, he did throw himself into the water, and indeed, no one thought twice about it. He flailed about for a while in the current, finally making his way to shore some distance downstream, disturbing only a group of nesting ducks. He emerged from his swim even more resolute in his resentment for the impertinence of humankind. These were his weaknesses; but such as they were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings – if he ever would have written them.

(This was originally written 25+ years ago as I was completing my MA in nonfiction, but with only a couple of edits it seems more appropriate now as I enter retirement.)