A dark-haired student, heavy set, with a deep...
A dark-haired student, heavy set, with a deep important voice, is talkingI think we ought to do Odets, he's the only playwright in America who's doing anything serious, at least he has his feet in the frustrations and aspirations of the common people
Boooooh, someone yells
O'Neill or Eliot are the only ones
Eliot doesn't belong in the same bed with O'Neill(Laughter)
They argue for an hour and Hearn listens to the namesA few are familiar to him, Ibsen and Shaw and Galsworthy, but he has never heard of Strindberg, Hauptmann, Marlowe, Lope De Vega, Webster, PirandelloThe names go on, and he tells himself desperately that he must read

He makes a start in the late spring of his first year, rediscovers the volume of Housman that nourished him in prep school, but to it he adds poets like Rilke and Blake and Stephen SpenderBy the time he goes home for the summer he has switched his major to English, and he deserts the beach many afternoons, the Sally Tendeckers and her replacements, spends the nights writing chanel white ceramic watch short stories
They are poor enough, but there is a temporary focus of excitement, a qualified successWhen he returns to Harvard, he makes one of the literary magazines in the fall competitions, glares drunkenly into the spotlight at the initiation, and comes off without making too big a fool of himself
The changes come slowly at first, then quicklyHe reads everything, spends a lot of time at Fogg, goes to the symphony on Friday afternoons, absorbs the pleasant connotative smell of old furniture and old prints and the malty odor of empty beer cans in the aged rooms of the magazineIn the spring he wanders through the burgeoning streets of Cambridge, strolls along the Charles, or stands talking outside his house entry while the evening comes, and there is all the magic of freedom
Several times he goes out on drunks to Scollay Square with a friend or twoIt is a self-conscious business with old clothing, an undeviating tour of all the bars and dives
Practice for finding the sawdust saloons on Third Avenue
If there is omega geneve puke on the floor, they are delighted; they are fraternity men dancing with movie starsBut the moods all changeAfter they become drunk, there is the pleasurable sadness of late spring evenings, the cognition of all hope and longing arrayed against the casual ugly attrition of time
God, look at these people, Hearn says, talk of your animal existences
What do you expect, his friend says, they're the by-product of an acquisitive society, refuse, that's all, the fester in Spengler's world-city
Jansen, you're a phony, what do you know about an acquisitive society, there's things I could tell you, it's different, you're a phony, that's all
So are you, we're all phoniesThe thing is to get out and join the movement
What's the matter, Hearn asks, you going political on me?
I'm not political, that's bullshit, everything's bullshitHe waves his arm sweepingly
Hearn, cupping his chin in his handYou know when nothing else is left I'm going to become a fairy, not a goddam little nance, you understand, but a nice upright balenciaga first pillar of the community, live on green lawnsNever a dull moment, man or woman, it's all the same to you, exciting
Jansen's head lollsNone of your machine-made copulations for meYou know the trouble with Americans is they don't know how to screw, there's no art in our lives, every intellectual has a Babbitt in the closetOh, I like that one, I like itCan it for me, will you, Jansen?
We're all neurotic
For a little while it is all quite gloriousThey are wise and aware and sick and the world outside is corrupt and they are the only ones who know itWeltschmertzen, mahogany melancholies, and Weltanschauungen are the only currency
But it does not always workI'm a phony, Hearn says, and there are times when it goes beyond the flippancy, the easy depression, the almost gratifying self-disgustSometimes there are things which can be done about it
He broods about this through the summer, has a fight with his father
I'll tell you, Robert, I don't know where you picked up all this union idea guff, but if you think they ain't a chanel pearls bunch of gangsters, if you think my men weren't better off depending on me, when Jesus Christ I've helped them out of many a scrape, and Christmas bonuses, Why don't you stay out of this, you don't know what the hell you're talking about
I resent that, but you never could understand what paternalism is
Maybe I don't being as it's a big word, but it seems to me it's easy enough to bite the hand that feeds ya
Well, you don't have to worry about that any more
But after a further series of supplications and quarrels, he goes back to school early, gets a job washing dishes in the Georgian, and keeps it once classes have startedThere are movements toward reconciliation; Ina comes out to Boston for the first time in three years, and a grudged truce is achievedHe writes home from time to time, but he will not take any money, and junior year is a grind of selling college subscriptions and pressing and laundering contracts to freshmen, odd jobs on weekends, and waiting on tables in the house as a substitute for classic chanel quilted bag dishwashin