THE FORTY-SIXTH PAGE

After the legalization of the break-up, my personal relationships were as random and satisfying as highway accidents. Again, no more pleasurable to observe or contemplate than a warring Belle et la Bête.

The only worthwhile relationships, anyway, were with my books. They never betrayed me. They never took, they only gave. I loved them, and they loved me back in equal measure. The men and women who conceived them were dead for most purposes, but the books lived on to comfort and succor me when from time to time I had to deal with the goddamned human race.

Alas, they were fecund little devils. As shown on the preceding page, the M’s were already congested. The S’s and W’s many years earlier had taken walls for themselves. Now the lesser letters were demanding walls of their own. Who would have thought the humble I, home of Irving and Isaacs and Isherwood would have demanded exclusive housing?

The story anthologies which for many years had followed Zukovsky’s “A” 1-12 in the poetry section no longer had shelves of their own and lay in piles of fairy stories, horror tales, erotica, and mythology. The private press editions, always a burden, were hidden in closets.

Change was needed; control was being lost.