Free The Apprentice Lover by Jay Parini Page B

Anacapri since 1948.) Brideshead Revisited was there, too, with a faded spine.
    â€œWhat ho,” Grant said, entering with a tray in his hands. It would take some time for me to get used to this affection for Edwardian phrases, like odd snatches from P. G. Wodehouse. “We can get down to it,” he said, taking his seat. “Can you take dictation?”
    â€œNot in shorthand,” I said.
    â€œNo matter. I’ll dictate slowly. You can write slowly.”
    I nodded.
    â€œOf course, you’ll type my letters and manuscripts.” He looked at me nervously. “You do type?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAmericans are good typists,” he said, “but that’s where it ends. Nothing of real interest in your literature.” He poured my tea through a strainer. “I take that back. Nothing of interest since Henry James. Do you like James?”
    â€œI’ve only read The Turn of the Screw.”
    He sighed. “We have our work cut out for us, don’t we?” After handing me the cup, he found a paperback of The Europeans , which he put on the tea tray. “Read this first, it’s early James. Easy to follow. We’ll move slowly. Eventually, you’ll be ready for the good stuff. The Wings of the Dove is best, I suspect.”
    â€œWhy not start there?”
    â€œYou would crumble. It takes time to get used to his methods, the periphrasis…Trust me, Alex. I’ve been through this before with Americans. They’re brought up on Hemingway. Very destructive influence, Hemingway. Baby talk.”
    Patriotic reflexes I had not known about sent an unfamiliar tingle through my body. “You don’t like Hemingway?”
    â€œHe was a silly man, a minor figure. There is one decent book of stories, the first, I think—some lovely things there. Nick Adams and so on. After that, it’s mostly bluster.” He settled back into his chair, balancing the tea on his lap. “Faulkner is better, I suppose, but he’s an acquired taste. I’ve never acquired it.”
    â€œI like Fitzgerald,” I said. I actually loved Fitzgerald, but didn’t want to overstate the case. Whole paragraphs from The Great Gatsby lingered in my head like poems.
    â€œPretty writing,” he said, dismissively. “Americans like pretty writing. Joseph Hergesheimer, James Branch Cabell, Fitzgerald.”
    I didn’t dare ask who were Hergesheimer and Cabell, but I got the point. “What about our poets?”
    â€œ Our poets?”
    I ignored his baiting. “Eliot, for example? Or Frost?”
    A bemused look crossed his face.
    â€œWhitman? Or Emily Dickinson?”
    â€œEliot, yes. I used to see him in London—a remarkable ear: Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged. That’s it. Excellent critic, too. Who could resist The Sacred Wood ? Frost was a decent poet, but I can only take him in small doses. And the shorter the poem, the better. Whitman I admire, in bits and pieces, and Dickinson, yes. Monotonous, perhaps, but memorably so.”
    â€œ The Sacred Wood?”
    â€œEliot’s essays—the early ones! Good God, man.” Disgusted, he plucked a copy of that slim volume from a shelf behind his desk and piled it on top of The Europeans . “Read ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent.’ It puts paid to most criticism written since. You can ignore the book reviews. He tends to fuss a bit.”
    â€œWhat about Auden?” I said.
    â€œHe’s English, no matter what he claims.”
    â€œYou and he were friends at Oxford?”
    â€œWe were contemporaries. But I was at Magdalen, so we met only in passing. We got to know each other later.” He slumped in his chair. “Everyone knew that he was the important poet, even before he published anything. Stephen printed his first poems on a small press. I still have my copy.”
    â€œStephen?”
    â€œSpender,” he said, exasperated.