Читать книгу Wickford Point онлайн

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"You see where I am leading?" Allen Southby said, and then I knew that I had been woolgathering again as I had at other Harvard lectures.

"What are you driving at?" I asked.

"At just that," he said, "at just that very thing. I am making a confession. All my preparation has led just to that."

"Just to what?" I asked.

Allen Southby smiled pensively, and then turned to me defiantly.

"I am going to come out in the open," he said. "I am going to write a novel."

"So that's why you got me here," I said.

"Well, not exactly," said Allen, "but in one way, yes. Of course, the thing I'd write wouldn't be like yours."

"No," I said, "it would be real, it wouldn't be perfunctory."

"Don't be bitter, Jim," said Allen. "I know the difficulties of commercial writing. I know them very well. You wouldn't mind looking at the first two chapters, would you, old man? You always have a lot of ideas. You see everybody has a good novel under his belt when he gets to be about forty. I've had rather an interesting life. You wouldn't mind glancing through the first two chapters? It's an autobiographical novel in a sense."