College stirred in her a certain contempt for virtues like kindness and persistence. She would have appeared to have been a kind and persistent person herself, but a steady diet of Antonioni films and an introductory course on existentialism had awakened her to the fact that she wanted more.

The cushions of my friend's couch were some kind of rubberized velour, the windows were uncurtained, and at five a.m. the birds were all atwitter and the light, the L.A. light everyone goes on and on about, was right in my East Coast eyes. Give me New York any day, I thought. But when New York came, it was with fangs and claws, in a nightmare I now woke from screaming.

Daddy just repeated the word, internship. As an alibi, it was a thing of beauty: its overtones of responsibility, of upward aspiration, were perfectly calculated to jam his circuits. Well, you know, we've already booked you a seat on the first manned spaceflight, but I suppose if you have an internship . . .

What would Walt Whitman do?

Between the whiskers scraggling down his neck and the now-crooked glasses, he could have been the Black Allen Ginsberg.