Читать книгу Wickford Point онлайн

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"That's necessary," I said. "You have to set the scene."

Allen's fingers still gripped one edge of the manuscript.

"Jim," he said, "wouldn't you rather wait until some other time? You've drunk half a bottle of whisky."

"Whisky helps," I said. "I can read it quicker, and perhaps it will make me cry."

Allen's body squirmed in his barrel armchair.

"Now wait a minute," he said, "just a minute. I want you to give this your serious attention, Jim. You mustn't look at it as though it were going into a popular magazine, because it isn't popular."

"As far as I'm concerned it's the first draft of Vanity Fair," I said. "You're William Makepeace Thackeray, and I'm Ticknor and Fields."

"Now wait a minute," said Allen, "please go about it in the right way. Please don't say some damned devastating thing without thinking. This is real to me, Jim, horribly real. It isn't one of these things that one dashes off for money. I don't want you to look at it as though it were. Of course I want your honest opinion. God knows that I'm not afraid of adverse criticism as long as it's constructive. I just don't want you to rip it up the back for no good reason, but I do really want your honest, considered opinion."