Leaving the World Read Online Free

out there cashing in on all the material bounty being offered in this, our new Gilded Age?’
    ‘Not everyone wants to be a robber baron,’ I said.
    David smiled. ‘“Robber baron.” Very Theodore Dreiser.’
    ‘I remember your chapter on Dreiser in The American Novel and a piece you wrote on the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Sister Carrie in the Atlantic .’
    ‘So you said in your application essay. But let me ask you something: do you rate Sister Carrie ?’
    ‘More than you do. I do take your point that there is a terrible leadenness to much of Dreiser’s prose. But that’s something he shares with Zola – a need to sledgehammer a point home and a certain psychological primitivism. And yes, I do like the point you make about Dreiser’s prolixity being bound up with the fact that he was one of the first novelists to use a typewriter. But to dismiss Dreiser as – what was the phrase you used? – “ a portentous purveyor of penny dreadfuls ” . . . With respect, you missed the point – and also used a lot of Ps in one sentence.’
    As soon as I heard that line come out of my mouth, I thought: What the hell are you saying here? But David wasn’t offended or put off by my directness. On the contrary, he liked it.
    ‘Well, Ms Howard, it’s good to see that you are anything but a brown-nose.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I’ve really overstepped the mark.’
    ‘Why think that? I mean, you’re going to be in the doctoral English program at Harvard, which means that you are going to be expected to display a considerable amount of independent thinking. And as I won’t work with anyone who’s a suck-up . . .’
    David didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he just smiled, enjoying the bemused look which had fixed itself on my face.
    ‘Professor, you said: “You’re going to be in the doctoral English program at Harvard.” But my application hasn’t been approved as yet.’
    ‘Take it from me – you’re in.’
    ‘But you do know that I will be applying for financial aid?’
    ‘Yes, I saw that – and I spoke with our department chairman about utilizing a fund we have. It was set up by one of the Rockefellers and is granted to one incoming doctoral candidate every year. Now, I see on your application that your father is a mining executive, based in Chile.’
    ‘ Was a mining executive,’ I said. ‘He lost his job around five years ago.’
    He nodded, as if to say: So that’s why money is so tight.
    I could have added how I could never, ever rely on my father for anything. But I always worried about burdening anybody (even my boyfriend) with the more unpleasant facets of my childhood. And I certainly wasn’t going to start gabbing about them during my interview with David Henry. So I simply said: ‘My father told his last boss to go have sex with himself. And since he refused to accept any job below that of the president of a company – and was also known as something of a hothead in his industry – his employment prospects dried up. He’s been “consulting” since then but makes hardly enough to keep himself going. So . . .’
    And I’d just revealed more than I intended to. David must have sensed this, as he simply smiled and nodded his head and said: ‘Well, your winning a full postgraduate scholarship to Harvard will surely please him.’
    ‘I doubt it,’ I said quietly.
    I was wrong about that. I wrote my dad a letter two months before my graduation from Smith, telling him how much I’d like him to be at the ceremony and also informing him about my all-expenses-paid scholarship to Harvard. Usually it took him around a month to write back to me – but this time a letter arrived within ten days. Clipped to it was a hundred-dollar bill. The letter was twenty-one words long:
    I am so proud of you!
    Sorry I can’t be at your graduation .
    Buy yourself something nice with this .
    Love
    Dad
    Within moments of opening it, I was in floods of tears. I