Read Online My Life as a Man by Philip Roth - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Philip Roth
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was an expression of the enthusiasm with which I took to my new vocation and of the passion I had in those days to judge myself by the strictest standard in every detail.
By noon I would have returned to my small quiet apartment, eaten a sandwich I had prepared for myself, and already have begun work on my own fiction. Three short stories I had written during the evenings when I was in the army had all been accepted for publication in a venerable literary quarterly; they were, however, no more than skillful impersonations of the sort of stories I had been taught to admire most in college—stories of “ The Garden Party ” variety—and their publication aroused in me more curiosity than pride. I owed it to myself, I thought, to find out if I might have a talent that was my own. “ To owe it to oneself, ” by the way, was a notion entirely characteristic of a man like my father, whose infl uence upon my thinking was more pervasive than might have been apparent to anyone—myself included—who had listened to me, in the classroom, discussing the development of a theory in Aristotle or a metaphor in Sir Thomas Browne.
At six p.m., following five hours of working at my fiction and an hour brushing up on my French—I planned to travel to Europe during the summer vacation—I bicycled back to the university to eat dinner in the Commons, where I had formerly taken my meals as a graduate student. The dark wood tones of the paneled hall, and the portraits of the university ’ s distinguished dead hanging above the refectory tables, satisfied a strong taste in me for institutional dignity. In such an environment I felt perfec tly content to eat alone; indeed, I would not have considered myself unblessed to have been told that I would be dining off a tray in this hall, eating these stews and Salisbury steaks, for the rest of my days. Before returning to my apartment to mark one seventh of my weekly stack of sixty-odd freshman essays (as many as I could take in a sitting) and to prepare the next day ’ s lesson, I would browse for half an hour or so in the secondhand bookstores in the neighborhood. Owning my own “ library ” was my only materialistic ambition; in fact, trying to decide which two of these thousands of books to buy that week, I would frequently get so excited that by the time the purchase was accomplished I had to make use of the bookseller ’ s toilet facilities. I don ’ t believe that either microbe or laxative has ever affected me so strongly as the discovery that I was all at once the owner of a sligh tly soiled copy of Empson ’ s Seven Types of Ambiguity in the original English edition.
At ten o ’ clock, having completed my classroom preparation, I would go off to a local graduate-student hangout, where generally I ran into somebody I knew and had a glass of beer-one beer, one game of pinball soccer, and then home, for before I went to sleep, there were still fifty pages to be underlined and annotated in some major work of European literature that either I hadn ’ t yet read or had misread the first time around. I called this “ filling in the gaps. ” Reading—and noting—fifty pages a night, I could average three books a month, or thirty-six a year. I also knew approximately how many short stories I might expect to complete in a year, if I put in thirty hours at it a week; and approximately how many students ’ essays I could mark in an hour; and how large my “ library ” would be in a decade, if I were to continue to be able to make purchases in accordance with my present budget. And I liked knowing all these things, and to this day like myself for having known them.
I seemed to myself as rich as a young man could be in spiritual goods; as for worldly goods, what could I possibly need that I didn ’ t have? I owned a bicycle to get around the neighborhood and provide me with exercise, a Remington portable (my parents ’ gift for my graduation from high school), a briefcase (their
By noon I would have returned to my small quiet apartment, eaten a sandwich I had prepared for myself, and already have begun work on my own fiction. Three short stories I had written during the evenings when I was in the army had all been accepted for publication in a venerable literary quarterly; they were, however, no more than skillful impersonations of the sort of stories I had been taught to admire most in college—stories of “ The Garden Party ” variety—and their publication aroused in me more curiosity than pride. I owed it to myself, I thought, to find out if I might have a talent that was my own. “ To owe it to oneself, ” by the way, was a notion entirely characteristic of a man like my father, whose infl uence upon my thinking was more pervasive than might have been apparent to anyone—myself included—who had listened to me, in the classroom, discussing the development of a theory in Aristotle or a metaphor in Sir Thomas Browne.
At six p.m., following five hours of working at my fiction and an hour brushing up on my French—I planned to travel to Europe during the summer vacation—I bicycled back to the university to eat dinner in the Commons, where I had formerly taken my meals as a graduate student. The dark wood tones of the paneled hall, and the portraits of the university ’ s distinguished dead hanging above the refectory tables, satisfied a strong taste in me for institutional dignity. In such an environment I felt perfec tly content to eat alone; indeed, I would not have considered myself unblessed to have been told that I would be dining off a tray in this hall, eating these stews and Salisbury steaks, for the rest of my days. Before returning to my apartment to mark one seventh of my weekly stack of sixty-odd freshman essays (as many as I could take in a sitting) and to prepare the next day ’ s lesson, I would browse for half an hour or so in the secondhand bookstores in the neighborhood. Owning my own “ library ” was my only materialistic ambition; in fact, trying to decide which two of these thousands of books to buy that week, I would frequently get so excited that by the time the purchase was accomplished I had to make use of the bookseller ’ s toilet facilities. I don ’ t believe that either microbe or laxative has ever affected me so strongly as the discovery that I was all at once the owner of a sligh tly soiled copy of Empson ’ s Seven Types of Ambiguity in the original English edition.
At ten o ’ clock, having completed my classroom preparation, I would go off to a local graduate-student hangout, where generally I ran into somebody I knew and had a glass of beer-one beer, one game of pinball soccer, and then home, for before I went to sleep, there were still fifty pages to be underlined and annotated in some major work of European literature that either I hadn ’ t yet read or had misread the first time around. I called this “ filling in the gaps. ” Reading—and noting—fifty pages a night, I could average three books a month, or thirty-six a year. I also knew approximately how many short stories I might expect to complete in a year, if I put in thirty hours at it a week; and approximately how many students ’ essays I could mark in an hour; and how large my “ library ” would be in a decade, if I were to continue to be able to make purchases in accordance with my present budget. And I liked knowing all these things, and to this day like myself for having known them.
I seemed to myself as rich as a young man could be in spiritual goods; as for worldly goods, what could I possibly need that I didn ’ t have? I owned a bicycle to get around the neighborhood and provide me with exercise, a Remington portable (my parents ’ gift for my graduation from high school), a briefcase (their
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