An Honest Ghost (13 page)

110

Is that right: Mary McCarthy The Group 310

“You bet!” Joe: Ken Kesey Sometimes a Great Notion 492

“No harm in: F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby 60

“I guess some: David McConnell The Silver Hearted 125

He noticed then: Kenzaburo Oe A Personal Matter 86

“Don’t worry,” I: Geoff Dyer Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling

with D. H. Lawrence 26

“Daddy was talking: Noel Coward Pomp and

Circumstance 86

“Your father is: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any

Other 24

This was all: Kenzaburo Oe A Quiet Life 3

“I am the: Italo Calvino Invisible Cities 152

“I like your: Plato Collected Dialogues 587

“De bargain it: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any

Other 25

It was the: Giacomo Casanova History of My Life 932

One is always: James Lasdun The Horned Man 125

All was greyness: W. G. Sebald After Nature 65

“I haven’t figured: Binnie Kirshenbaum Pure Poetry 50

“But you really: Dezso Kosztalanyi Skylark 76

And so we: James Danziger American Photographs

(introduction, no page numbers)

Phew: James Joyce Finnegans Wake 522

That night, after: Kenzaburo Oe A Quiet Life 125

The twilight desert: Kenzaburo Oe A Quiet Life 127

What does this: Daniel Dennett Consciousness Explained

130

The rain beat: Anton Chekhov The Portable Chekhov 384

All night long: Philip Roth Professor of Desire 262

The dream is: Bruce Duffy The World As I Found It 31

The lamp is: Samuel Beckett Disjecta 22

3

But whirligig Time: Richard Rodriguez Brown 143

I awoke, yet: John Ashbery Flow Chart 192

Lost in darkness: David Lynch Lost Highway xi

Living with a: Chris Kutschera The Kurdish National

Movement 94

The first three: Amy Hempel At the Gates of the Animal

Kingdom 43

My artistic nature: Lydie Salvayre Portrait of the Artist as a

Domesticated Animal 23

It was my: Andrew Holleran Nights in Aruba 31

Suspense is fascinating: Nick Piombino Contradicta 20

It is fear: Montaigne Selected Essays 25

I regret sometimes: Guy Hocquenghem Screwball Asses 16

The taboo gives: Adam Phillips Equals 58

But most men: Alan Bennett Writing Home 64

Fear tweaks the: Christopher Isherwood A Single Man 9

So David tells: J. M. Barrie The White Bird 11

Naturally: Merle Miller On Being Different 16

Though blue, the: Albert Camus The Plague 36

Very strange: David Lynch Lost Highway 17

To look at: Susan Sontag Styles of Radical Will 10

4.

“I suppose my: Ivy Compton-Burnett Parents and Children

7

“I know you: Andre Tellier Twilight Men 72

From the first: Thomas Bernhard The Loser 10

“I wonder why: Ivy Compton-Burnett Parents and

Children 17

Few emotions are: W. G. Sebald On the Natural History of

Destruction 129

She sounded slightly: Colm Toibin The Master 252

Her voice softened: Heinrich Boll The Silent Angel 139

She was capable: Wendy Moffat A Great Unrecorded

History 7

“Oh, well-behaved: Georges Bataille The Blue of Noon 18

A hard-bitten: Virginia Woolf Orlando 40

She’s insane and: Mary Jo Bang Inferno 18

At this very: Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day 48

Poor Eleanor, how: Edward St Aubyn At Last 104

When we reflect: Shunryu Suzuki Zen Mind, Beginner’s

Mind 39

In a flurry: Susanna Pinney, ed. I’ll Stand by You: Letters of

Sylvia Townsend Warner 13

Her beauty seemed: Andrew Holleran Nights In Aruba 34

“In this heat,”: Ronald Firbank Three More Novels 55

She was on: W. Somerset Maugham The Razor’s Edge 212

It was a: Sylvia Townsend Warner Summer Will Show 85

New York on: Anita Brookner Look at Me 41

There all the: James Joyce Ulysses 37

She was silent: Jenny McPhee A Man of No Moon 268

Her unassailable assumption: Jane Gardam Faith Fox 63

She often refers: Peter Cameron Someday This Pain Will Be

Useful To You 57

But her beauty: Bill Pronzini The Hidden 41

Her feelings came: NOON 2007 ed., Diane Williams 160

She stressed her: Denton Welch Maiden Voyage 257

Naturally she is: Gertrude Stein Wars I Have Seen 146

“David,” she said: Honoré de Balzac Lost Illusions 505

Bravo!: Lydie Salvayre Portrait of the Artist as a

Domesticated Animal 179

She stood there: H. Rider Haggard She 161

I am but: H. Rider Haggard She 187

In any case: Gore Vidal Palimpsest 159

Anxiety like a: Leo Lerman The Grand Surprise 511

Anxiety being the: David Markson Wittgenstein’s Mistress

72

I expected sympathy: Gore Vidal Palimpsest 239

5.

The weather had: Joris-Karl Huysmans Against Nature 166

It was hot: Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy 514

I spent that: James Lasdun The Horned Man 161

I was lying: Noel Coward Pomp and Circumstance 75

I read it: Shohaku Okumura Living By Vow 133

The only fact: Denis Donoghue American Classics 205

I like to: David Lehman, ed. Great American Prose Poems

216

There is no: Italo Calvino Invisible Cities 48

Above me, in: H. G. Wells The Time Machine 118

Here we are: Celine Death on the Installment Plan 15

Take a few: B. K. S. Iyengar Light on Yoga 22

I felt naked: H. G. Wells The Time Machine 27

So I enter: B. K. S. Lyengar Light on Yoga 394

In many respects: Tim Dean Unlimited Intimacy 195

What stumps me: Lucia Perillo I’ve Heard the Vultures

Singing 18

Everything was becoming: Georges Bataille The Blue of

Noon 84

I kept having: Gordon Lish Zimzum 75

Why do we: Slavoj Zizek Did Somebody Say

Totalitarianism? 196

I used to: Robert Bolaño By Night in Chile 1

But gay men: Edmund White City Boy 80

We always worry: Michael Cunningham By Nightfall 53

I am almost: Ludwig Wittgenstein Notebooks 1914-1916 31

The razor-sharp: Robert Bolaño Amulet 49

6.

My decision to: Gore Vidal Palimpsest 385

I lacked both: Alex Ross Listen to This 7

I am forty: Kenneth Koch 1000 Avant-Garde Plays 19

Beneath everything else: Edmund White Nocturnes for the

King of Naples 88

The place was: Graham Greene The Heart of the Matter 8

The problem is: Iannis Xenakis Formalized Music 29

I opened the: Teju Cole Open City 164

Generally, even then: David Markson Wittgenstein’s

Mistress 240

A lost soul: Robert Frost The Notebooks of Robert Frost 373

That’s me: Sherrie Eldridge 20 Things Adopted Kids Wish

Their Adoptive Parents Knew 169

The psychological feeling: Theodor Adorno The Stars

Down to Earth 128

I dropped David: J. M. Barrie The White Bird 211

“Did you know: H. Rider Haggard She 81

Several times he: Colm Toibin The Master 248

David extended his: Carl Van Vechten Parties 173

“I’m so sorry: Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence 62

The things one: David Markson Wittgenstein’s Mistress 53

“I am glad: Noel Coward Pomp and Circumstance 12

The irony of: Charles Kaiser 1968 in America 239

“How are you: Alfred Chester The Exquisite Corpse 49

He does not: Giacomo Casanova History of My Life 931

“I am the: Andre Tellier Twilight Men 24

There was a: Walter Kirn My Hard Bargain 69

But soon this: Huysmans Against Nature 207

What, if anything: Harold Bloom Hamlet: Poem Unlimited

86

What was the: H. Rider Haggard She 96

Who will speak: Michael Cunningham By Nightfall 54

“Which cathedral do: Denton Welch Maiden Voyage 37

A moan burst: Carl Van Vechten Parties 130

He was handsome: Henry James The Aspern Papers

and The Turn of the Screw 149

His broad shoulders: Edmund White My Lives 222

“But you have: John Ashbery April Galleons 24

You are too: Gore Vidal Two Sisters 14

It’s too serious: Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence 105

Amused, I nodded: Colette Pure and Impure 15

“I may be: Rachel Ingalls Mrs. Caliban 7

We will see: Frederick Seidel Poems 1959-2009 186

“Fortunately, I know: J. D. Salinger Franny and Zooey 157

“I’m interested in: David McConnell The Silver Hearted

122

“Ah.”: David McConnell The Silver Hearted 123

His leisure hours: Alex Ross Listen to This 126

There is, of: Michael Cunningham By Nightfall 19

He was young: Virginia Woolf Orlando 28

And so on: Roland Barthes Reader xiii

He was a: James Joyce Portait of the Artist as a Young Man

192

Take care of: Susanna Pinney, ed. I’ll Stand by You: Letters

of Sylvia Townsend Warner 19

Do you love: Kenneth Koch 1000 Avant-Garde Plays 19

7.

The cuckoo came: John Ashbery and James Schuyler A

Nest of Ninnies 40

It was a: James Joyce Dubliners 31

Summer was a: Rudy Wilson The Red Truck 129

Inwardness, calm, solitude: Roland Barthes Mourning

Diary 100

No, that’s too: Merle Miller On Being Different 19

Silence: Vladimir Nabokov Laughter in the Dark 192

At one point: Ron Padgett Joe 24

I must photograph: Charles Henri Ford Like Water from a

Bucket 153

Little ineffectual unquenchable: E.M. Forster A Passage to

India 120

It was the: Virginia Woolf Orlando 85

He was looking: Thomas Bernhard “The Joiner” German

Short Stories ed., David Constantine 263

He is not: John Banville The Infinities 9

Solitude had acted: J-K. Huysmans Against Nature 84

At school, he: Edgar Saltus Mr. Incoul’s Misadventure 4

The other children: Edmund White Genet xv

In the meantime: Thomas Bernhard The Loser 16

There was an: David Wojnarowicz Memories That Smell

Like Gasoline 27

He’s a beautiful: James Blake The Joint 167

It hurts to: John Waters Role Models 294

I have often: Gore Vidal Palimpsest 295

I admit I: Edmund White Genet 100

(In Wilde’s phrase: Roland Barthes Reader xvi

Similarly, I sometimes: David Levithan The Full Spectrum

172

We can only: Ivy Compton-Burnett Darkness and Day 8

8.

By Thanksgiving, Joe: Ron Padgett Joe 87

He stayed at: Filip Noterdaeme The Autobiography of

Daniel J. Isengart 73

He asked me: James Blake The Joint 167

“Even if there: Kenzaburo Oe A Quiet Life 149

I don’t want: Sam Massey Return of the Greek 47

I am like: Conor Cruise O’Brien Camus 29

We’re going to: Giacomo Leopardi Canti 25

Salvation lies in: Sarah Bakewell How to Live 35

“Can’t you smell: J-K Huysmans Against Nature 118

“What is it?: Brenda McCreight Parenting Your Adopted

Older Child 32

I suddenly thought: Frederick Seidel Poems 1959-2009 3

He was the: D. H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers 85

What had been: Gioia Timpanelli Sometimes the Soul 21

It was like: Franz Kafka The Castle 27

“Yes, yes, I: Graham Greene The Heart of the Matter 31

I feel in: D. H. Lawrence Selected Letters 260

You must have: Max Ewing Going Somewhere 79

You’re not angry: O. Henry The Four Million 67

“No,” said Joe: Charles Dickens Barnaby Rudge 105

I want his: James Joyce Ulysses 46

“I think that: Sam Massey Return of the Greek 65

Anyway, you’ll get: Mark Merlis American Studies 168

“Will you?” said: Charles Dickens Barnaby Rudge 584

“What is that: John Banville The Infinities 11

“Men are such: Michael Cunningham By Nightfall 53

Score one for: Michael Cunningham By Nightfall 55

The world was: Vladimir Nabokov Laughter in the Dark

192

The nature of: Andrezj Walicki A History of Russian

Thought 24

But in all: James Blake The Joint 313

I get bored: Umberto Eco The Mysterious Flame of Queen

Loana 327

This is the: Alan Bennett Writing Home xiii

To me there: Ivy Compton-Burnett Darkness and Day 14

In the course: J-K Huysmans Against Nature 118

But the city: Gilbert Highet Poets in a Landscape 162

“We are both: Charles Henri Ford Like Water From a

Bucket 214 He was no: Edmund White Rimbaud 35

“You’re probably wondering: Plato Gorgias 12

He begins to: Giles and Miller, eds. The Arts of

Contemplative Care 75

Joe looked at: Charles Dickens Great Expectations 559

Every heartstring is: Edmund White Rimbaud 21

It would be: W. H. Auden Forewords and Afterwords 292

It took him: Rudyard Kipling Kim 118

The eloquence of: Dickens Barnaby Rudge 632

The silence speaks: James Joyce Finnegans Wake 10

Like a big: Kenzaburo Oe A Quiet Life 2

He knew I: Lincoln Kirstein By With To and From 70

Thank God for: Frederick Seidel Poems 1959-2009 5

You can count: Sherrie Eldridge 20 Things Adopted Kids

Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew 143

Everybody knows you: John Waters Role Models 264

“I’m the man: D. H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers 84

He knocked at: Charles Kaiser The Gay Metropolis 21

“I am!”: Charles Dickens Great Expectations 164

But many questions: Hungarian Photographs 26

Either way, I: George W. S. Trow Bullies 4

9.

David watched my: J. M. Barrie The White Bird 101

“You hear what: Charles Dickens Barnaby Rudge 10

We must be: Charles Dickens Barnaby Rudge 109