"One should remind oneself," said Balfour, as he said every week, "that James Joyce initially favored private publication." Then he added: "Proust, too, by the way."

"But that was ... Wasn't that just a maneuver? To avoid a homosexuality scandal," said Richard carefully. "Advice from Gide. Before Proust went to Gallimard."

"Nabokov," suggested Balfour.

"Yeah but that was just a book of love poems. When he was a schoolboy.”

"Nevertheless. Philip Larkin. And of course James Joyce."

Balfour was always doing this. Richard expected to learn that Shakespeare got his big break with a vanity publisher; that Homer responded to some ad whining for fresh trex. The Tantalus Press, it went without saying, was not a springboard to literary eminence. The Tantalus Press was a springboard to more of the same: to Another Gift from Genius. "Private" publishing was not organized crime exactly, but it had close links with prostitution. The Tantalus Press was the brothel. Balfour was the madam. Richard helped the madam out. Their writers paid them .. . And a writer ought to be able to claim that he had never paid for it—never in his life.