Ape and Essence [antikvár]

iTALLISIt was the day of Gandhi's assassination; but on Calvary the sightseers were more interested in the contents of their picnic baskets than in the possible significance of the, after aU, rather commonplace event they had turned out to witness. In spite of aU the astronomers can say, Ptolemy was perfectly right: the center of the universe is here, not there. Gandhi might be dead; but across the desk in his office, across the lunch table in the Studio Commissary, Bob Briggs was concerned to talk only about himself."You've always been such a help," Bob assured me, as he made ready, not without relish, to teU the latest installment of hU history.But at bottom, as I knew very well and as Bob himself knew even better than I, he didn't really want to be helped. He liked being in a mess and, still more, he Uked talking about his predicament. The mess and its verbal dramatization made it possible for him to see himseli as all the Romantic Poets rolled into oneBeddoes committing suicide, Byron committing fornication, Keats dying of Fanny Brawne, Harriet dying of Shelley. And seeing himself as all the Romantic Poets, he could forget for a little the two prime sources of his miserythe fact that he had I