I realize that I may have contributed to his wanting to be silent during our walks by my too concentrated and cathected soundings re the books in his life. I was groping gingerly for his intellectual keystone, but not gingerly enough. There are certain quagmires to be avoided with people. You can find yourself liking someone who appears intellectually normal and then have him let drop that his favorite book of all time is The Prophet. That wasn’t the particular danger with Denoon, but there were others. A guy who tells you the best novel ever written is Clarissa, which also happens to be the first or second novel ever written, is also not unlikely to tell you that the only music he likes to listen to is motets and that art has never really advanced over the cave paintings at Lascaux. I suppose I was on the qui vive for some variant of this reflex because Denoon had said his favorite novel was War and Peace, so I was thinking, Oh no, it’s going to be Beethoven for music and Shakespeare for plays. It isn’t that these positions are not defensible, but taking them may mean someone is not very individual. One thing you distinctly never want to hear a man you’re interested in say softly is that his favorite book in the whole world is The Golden Notebook. Here you are dealing with a liar from the black lagoon and it’s time to start feeling in your purse for carfare. Anyway, when I sensed the depth of Denoon’s desire for a little silence, I desisted. What I got out of this first attempt to look at his literary underpinnings was a paperback called L’Afrique Noire est Mal Partie to read and comment on.