Someone said, “My friend, never indulge in any follies except those that will bring you great pleasure.”

“Virtue is synonymous with enthusiasm.” Who said that? Was it Galiani or Nietzsche?

A bunch of us jumped into a 1951 Chevy, drove to New York, dashed into P.J. Clarke’s at 3rd Avenue and 55th Street and got very drunk. That’s all I recall of the trip.

How is this for a jawbreaker of a thought. “The earlier 14th century Slavic nationalism of the Pole, Lithuanian and Czech directed against the first onward march of the Germans must be kept in mind when considering the recrudescence of the Slavic nationalism in the 19th and 20th Century, again directed in large part against the Germans.” That comes from a text I happened to pick out of the stacks in the library the other night. The library is my home. The stacks, my refuge.

I’m making an honest effort to do some work. Making Dean’s List again is important. Why is it when you try to be sincere, you meaning me, do barriers fall in place to continually thwart your effort? I don’t know, but someday soon I may start to think the odds are against me, although I realize I have so much going for me that I’ll survive it all despite the nasty bastards who keep getting in my way. Someday soon. I fear I hope in vain. Someday soon.

Letter to the History Book Club.
Dear Sir,
You probably are wondering why this book, being one of my bonus selections on recently joining your club, is being returned to you so quickly. When I received my first three books for your delicious low price, I decided to naturally read one, A.J.P. Taylor’s The Struggle for Mastery in Europe before I started the others. I immediately inscribed my name on the first page so in the event it was stolen from my dorm I might have some future luck in ultimately getting it back. I then moved into the book and read the introduction. Then, due to a reasonable curiosity concerning a certain major event I went to the index, found what I was looking for and turned to the page in question. Lo, much to my surprise it was missing. The page was missing! This has happened to me in the past with other books but I was even more shocked when I discovered one set of pages repeated twice. Pages 446 and 479 are missing and pages 425 and 446 are in duplicate. I know this is not your fault and I would appreciate another copy of the same book. Payment for the three books is being sent to you under separate cover. Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter. Sincerely, etc.

No mail yet from Bess. That does it. I tried and failed.

My room off campus will cost six bucks a week. That will be one hundred eight dollars for eighteen weeks. The room is at 229 McCartney Street with Mrs. Brown. Pay the rent and start to move my things slowly but steadily. I have to get out of this goddamn dorm quickly for my sanity and privacy.

“Martydom is the only way for a man to become famous without ability.” George Bernard Shaw.

Cut. Scene ends. I’m in no mood to write tonight. I don’t have the emotional strength to hold my pen.

January 22, 1955. First final exam is now over. Cross the date off my calendar. Only five more exams to go.

Bobby is really in a bad way fighting himself and his parents, yet he seems complacent in his misery. I would very much like to see him ten years from now.

Discipline in action— up every morning early.

Time is but a fleeting thing while life is time in passing. Someone must have said that.

Women are strange beasts. They are the one thing man’s ego cannot conquer. I love them all, no matter what.

Music is the supreme relaxer. In any form, it diverts one’s attention from the tediousness of everyday life.

Song, “Getting to be a Habit With Me.” Momentarily reminds me of Carole. It is wonderful how I can look at her almost objectively. It’s a good feeling.

My hands are shaking more than usual. Probably the pressure of the exams period. I haven’t had any ale in two weeks. I can’t wait until this is over.

Still haven’t heard from all those graduate schools I wrote. Maybe they forgot me. Who knows? Ha! That would be a laugh.

Surprise of surprises. Got a letter from Bess and a very nice one, too. I am just a bit relaxed and a bit happy. Damn happy, to say the least, which is the most.

But with it, some depression. Today I spent six dollars for my room, five dollars for books, four dollars for cleaning bills and one dollar for other small items. Now I have eleven dollars left for the week. I still have to get a comb. I keep losing combs. And I need a styptic pencil for the shaving cuts on my tender skin. Take my one good tweed jacket into the shoemaker for leather arm patches. It will add to its appearance and make it last longer.

“The mood and surroundings are air-conditioned Jean Paul Sarte.” Now, who said that and in what context? Can’t seem to remember. Which brings up an idea.

There I am, floating. But why am I in a place like that, I’ll never know. I could have only been in one site and strange as it appeared, I recognized most everything. I looked at my guide and asked him if we were in the right place. Sure enough, he replied with some pique. I haven’t been doing this for too long, but, well now, I am considered an expert. I don’t make mistakes, my friend. I smiled, then laughed. Nerves in action. The test worked. Momentarily happy, pleased because I finally made it. It did not come easy because my work did not lead to an end. It was not conducive to joyful fulfillment. My location is difficult to describe but I am in a black pit with flashing lights. Despite my position, I could finally be an individual and exist among those who cared little for others. I had made it and so I laughed loud and true, thus perplexing my guide who looked at me as if I were not all there. He probably thinks I am out of whack, unbalanced.

That power feeling is recurring in me . . . This . . .

Then you awake and you walk into a real world with its smells, its dark hues, its despair, its ugliness, its haunting air of defeat, its solitude, its loneliness. All are parts of the real world, parts we are unable to escape by closing our eyes. Some of us do escape because we are unfortunate. Again we face the real world increased one thousand-fold by the unreality of the reality. We again relive what has gone before. We cry. We struggle. We are unable to rest spiritually or physically. We envy those who do. But should we? You who suffer know its consequences. You are among those who continuously fight it. Realize when you do, if suffering departs your heart and soul, what then remains? Peace? Only fools know peace. Peace of what? Heart? Soul? Mind? Spirit? They are nothing compared with the very act of existence. Lives are not all struggles. Neither is life all pleasure and love, although some seem to feel it acutely: that is unreality. Those who think only with their emotions are the fools in our system. They continue sleeping. Some say reality is only definable according to the individual. This makes little sense unless I am becoming too dogmatic. When one looks at the world through objectively colored glasses, he can see the truth on the other side. If he cannot, then a new set of lenses or continued sleep, with no chance to wake up, would be his best alternative. He would, under those circumstances, continue his merry way until he is ever so gently, so mildly, thrown to the lions where he will be in no shape to fight off the resulting, life threatening attack.

“A man is nothing but the ensemble of his acts.” Sartre and his obvious emphasis on action.

Love is a sudden sting, the bite of a bumblebee. Love is missing a step going downstairs and falling flat on your puff-eyed, sleepless face. Erotic pleasure is having it all. Eroticism is the fusion of two soldering irons. Love is agony and reverence.

January 31, 1955. I took an upper at five this morning to keep me going while I study. There is no immediate effect, down or up. No lift. After ten minutes I still feel nothing. Another ten minutes passes and I feel no change. I’m waking up, though. Possibly I’ll never notice anything. Fifteen minutes later I feel a small, dulling on the left side of my head. This feeling comes and goes. I’m very cold. The room is cold. Outside it is between five and ten degrees above zero. Thirty minutes later and I’m thinking clearly. The feeling in my stomach is nothing more than my normal morning ache. It’s now twenty minutes later and I’m still awake. I yawn. But there’s no adverse effect. My mind is clear and my body is my body. They say this pill usually works between fifteen and fifty minutes. It should be affecting me now. It’s not. It’s now six in the morning on January 31, 1955. I won’t do this again.

February 1, 1955. I don’t miss her enough to go permanently blue over thinking about her, dwelling on it. I’ll be back in school in a few days, curious and apprehensive, and, honestly, worried over my marks, especially that philosophy course I took. We shall see. I have the prediction marked down someplace, elsewhere, wherever. It might be lower than what I expect. I’m also apprehensive regarding my many applications, what they are doing and when and how I shall hear? I imagine those, too, will come soon. Yes. Everything shall come in due time and under its own volition. Little can speed the march of fate, my fate. It falls where it will and leaves its most lasting mark where it may. Ow.

In these last few evenings I’ve put many words on paper. I use real ink. The ink is black. Words on paper are pretty things. My thoughts have been hasty, confused and I can boil them down to a few choice sentences. Where am I? What am I? Why am I? Why do I think and act the way I do? Why? The puzzle of me is my destiny.

My room is bitter cold. There is no heat after ten at night. I wear my overcoat and stare at the radiator. The bed is so hard a dead man could not tell it is old and stiff like a board. My desk is a bookcase sawed in half. I have three square feet to walk in the middle of the room. A full pack of Camels is to my left. The lighter is to my right. My old, worn watch works and loses little time. The floor is very dusty. Even the creatures living there, demand a rescue. Soon I’ll try to sleep.

Easton, Pennsylvania, still early February. Received a letter from N.Y.U. They want me to write back and ask for an interview at my convenience for their convenience.

Two more marks back. One to go and its solid, an A, Dean’s List, and freedom. Come through, baby, for the folks and me.

Get ink. Get stamps. Bring in Laundry again.

Sell an old textbook for beer money. Get some more dough from home. Tend bar at a frat house or two. Get Valentine cards and save money for transcripts.

Pickup “Russia” by Pares and Tawney, both in the Mentor series.

Buy “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck.

Time for rejoicing. I made Dean’s List again, well above my target and with some to spare.

Back in New York I’m on the subway reading the racing results on page 32 of the World Telegram & Sun, the finals from Belmont, the sixth from Saratoga. I don’t know why I’m reading the results. I never bet, have no interest in horse racing. As life goes its merry way, a fight breaks out. People stop what they are doing. They lift their eyes. They heave a sigh. It’s outside their business. It has nothing to do with them. It’s for the two who keep screaming at each other. They are only doing what they have done in the past— perhaps that very morning. A morning so rudely passed by.

Interview at N.Y.U. On February 15. Write this afternoon to accept.

Add plethora.

“The Hunting of the Snark” by Lewis J Carroll.

Read the “Rennaissance Reader” and soon.

White snow falls on dirty sidewalks cracked from wear. People hurry by, immersed in their thoughts. The subway is hot, crowded, dank and musty, though deep in winter. I see soggy shoes everywhere. Once clean fingers, some just washed, now blacked from damp newspapers carried under arms or opened to the sports pages. Where else? People squeeze together into subway cars. The odor of wet wool and damp souls fills the nostrils. The train is like life: It moves, stops, jerks, opens, closes, comes and goes. I look out as I pass houses with their window shades up exposing ruffled beds from the early morning. There’ll be no starched sheets in those homes. Ozzie and Harriet really do only live on television. But mussed sheets are better than none. The train never seems to empty. Passengers sigh in unison.

February 15, 1955. New York. For N.Y.U. When I visit and have my interview: I would like to be in a position where I can coordinate and originate mass media (radio and television in particular) with education and present it to the public. My purpose is to give people a brighter perspective and broader idea of relativity.

Or: I would like to be in a position where I will be able to coordinate educational facilities with the mass media possibly to create a greater perspective and relativity among the masses.

Do I know what I am talking about? No matter. Refine this.

Not a good day. All sorts of the unexpected hit me squarely. I had an interview at N.Y.U. I goofed badly. It’s the only way I can put it. The simple questions asked of me by the head of the graduate study’s department were things I should have known, period. I don’t think, he will accept me into his vaunted course because I lack many prerequisites he seeks. I believe I didn’t impress him. We shall see. He said he’s strict and that he demands utmost fidelity to his structure and beliefs. And I thought an open mind was important for a liberal education.