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He sat behind a desk sprawled with papers, hands interleaved before him as if by a mortician. He closed the door behind me, then steered me to a chair facing his desk. I figured he'd decided against recommending me, having found the poems and essays I'd sent him in advance dim-witted. I felt oafish…

But I rounded each corner believing rescue would show up. [...]

(What hurts so bad about youth isn't the actual butt whippings the world delivers. It's the stupid hopes playacting like certainties.)

[...] Do I remember Puff the Magic Dragon, he wants to know. Do I? On my fun scale, it ranks with the Nuremberg Trials. [...]

[...] I've published one slim volume of verse and some essays, but so has every other semiliterate writer in Cambridge. It's like owning a herd of cattle in my home state of Texas, publishing a book is.

X works for General Motors. All day long he performs a single repetitive task. The things he helps to make are not under his control. And yet he feels good. He is proud of the bustling capitalist economy; he may even be convinced that the capability to perform simple repetitive tasks is the only ca…