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Show Anting Alone Page 204 been operating under would've been that he had remained all these years personally enamored of the Great Pimp of New York, and was simply trying to send him libations, tribute. In either case, one can understand the stifling effect on Sam's appetite of having to sit in the same car with Professor C. So, even if one of these profs offered to buy (which was totally unlikely) . Sam was not planning on eating anything much this afternoon at the inquisition. Incidentally, all this should by no means be misconstrued as an attempt summarily to condemn all English professors. There was one, good Dr. Abraham, who was simply of another species altogether. He served as a dignified inspiration to Sam when horrible hate-of-a-place began to press its cold grey cinderbrick up through his guts. Dr. Abraham was a marvel of an old white-bearded patriarch, born and bred, astoundingly enough, in some nearby dogpile farming town. He was a local who'd somehow managed to rise above his circumstances to become a world-famous literary man. He shared the back pages of the Norton Critical Huckleberry Finn with none other than T. S. Eliot. That was something Sam could never get out of his mind. There were times when Sam's megalomania saw something like the Mantle of Prophetic Office being passed down in a direct line of succession: from God to Elijah to Elisha; from Eliot to Abraham to Edwine. Now, this was not pure unfounded puffery on Sam's part. The whole reason Sam was able to adopt such a flippant attitude toward his teaching responsibilities was that he had a staunch defender as well as a father- |
