If you're famous and supposedly wise, it's always a good idea to have a tape recorder in the room. Never can tell when you might spew out a line or two worth printing somewhere.
I jabbered too much in class about all the Russian writers whom I admired for being, among other things, uncouth and somewhat humorously melodramatic, such as Gogol and Dostoyevsky, just as it was in my own household when I was growing up.
If I wanted to be Rimbaud, what was I doing in graduate school? Trying to stay out of the army, of course. Graduate study gave me a draft deferment. But I also knew I lacked erudition and polish and was often sunk in forlorn reveries.
I can recall photographs of Comrade Ulbricht being embraced by Comrade Brezhnev, which must have been like putting your arms around Grant's Tomb.
My own father used to boast to me of biting off a man's ear in a street fight.
