Modernism was a brief divagation into difficulty; but Richard was still out there, in difficulty.

Or a borstal boy on the lam

These moments will in retrospect appear golden-age, prelapsarian.

In any metaphor that linked writing with parturition, no, Richard wouldn't come out well. What were they, his novels? Not stillborn. More like those babies whom it was thought best to spirit away

Somehow it always happened that Richard was out on the street when the German car ripped past—frozen with loathing, his imprecations tousled and tossed aside by the barreling backdraft.

This morning two clues in particular taunted and traduced him

The floorboards hummed and tickled shod feet with the work of the hidden hypocaust.

a court so rich in excrescences and asperities that his choice of groundstroke—forehand or backhand—necessarily depended on the ball’s right-angled bounce

To go gently, with, perhaps, a modest but timely apothegm on his lips.

A few plangent inhalations, on Avenue B