Invisible

That’s the way I am. Life is too short for dawdling. My third-grade teacher used to tell us the same thing—with exactly those words.

I could dump all the money in your lap tomorrow, of course, but that wouldn’t really help you, would it? Margot is worried about your future, and if you can make this magazine work, then your future is settled. You’ll have a decent job with a decent salary, and during your off-hours you can write all the poems you want, vast epic poems about the my

I spent the next nine hours in a torment of anticipation, daydreaming through my afternoon classes, pondering the mysteries of carnal attraction, and trying to understand what it was about Margot that had worked me up to such a pitch of excitement. My first impression of her had not been particularly favorable. She had struck me as an odd and vapid

You and your sister are no longer the floundering, ignorant puppies you were on the night of the grand experiment, and what you are proposing now is a monumental transgression, a dark and iniquitous thing according to the laws of man and God. But you don’t care. That is the simple truth of the matter: you are not ashamed of what you feel. You love

Fear is a good thing, I continued, repeating the word he had used in his first letter, fear is what drives us to take risks and extend ourselves beyond our normal limits, and any writer who feels he is standing on safe ground is unlikely to produce anything of value.

In the meantime, maybe you can tell us something about Westfield, New Jersey. Westfield? I said, surprised to discover that Born knew where I had grown up. How did you find out about Westfield?

When I thought back to our conversation at the West End on Monday, I realized that I had probably given him the idea in the first place. I had mentioned that I might look for work with a publisher or a magazine after I graduated from college, and a minute later he was telling me about his inheritance and how he was considering starting up a publish

He confronts Mr. X and tells him that if he doesn’t quit the service immediately, he will have him arrested. These are the early sixties, remember. Capital punishment was still in force, and arrest means the guillotine for Mr. X. What can he do? He has no choice but to kill Mr. Y. Not with a bullet, of course. Not with a blow to the head or a knife

He talked about the Nazis and the war, and then he advanced the startling theory that Hitler’s admiration of the United States had inspired him to use American history as a model for his conquest of Europe. Look at the parallels, Born said, and it’s not as far-fetched as you’d think: extermination of the Indians is turned into the extermination of