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First name Max — no, Maxim — surname like a goyische pickle. Maxim Cornichon? Don’t be ridiculous. Maxim Gherkin? Forget it.
Gorky
.
Maxim Gorky
.
    Anyway, the bookshop had to be negotiated like a maze, towering stacks of second-hand books here, there, and everywhere, that could be sent tumbling if you didn’t mind your elbows, as you followed Mr. McIver’s slapping slippers into the back room. His sanctuary. Where he sat at his roll-top desk, elbows peeking out of his ancient, unravelling cardigan, conducting seminars on the evils of capitalism, serving students toast and strawberry jam and milky tea. If they couldn’t afford the latest Algren or Graham Greene, or that first novel by that young American, Norman Mailer, he would lend them a brand-new copy, providing they promised to return it unsoiled. Students demonstrated their gratitude by pilfering books on their way out and selling them back to him the following week. One or two even dipped into his cash register, or stiffed him with a bad cheque for ten or twenty dollars, never turning up at the bookshop again. “So you’re going to Paris,” he said to me.
    â€œYes.”
    This, inevitably, led to a lecture on the Paris Commune. Doomed, like the Spartacist League in Berlin. “Would you mind taking a parcel to my son?” he asked.
    â€œOf course not.”
    I went to pick it up at the McIvers’ airless, overheated apartment that evening.
    â€œA couple of shirts,” said Mr. McIver. “A sweater Mrs. McIver knitted for him. Six tins of sockeye salmon. A carton of Player’s Mild. Things like that. Terry wants to be a novelist, but …”
    â€œBut?”
    â€œBut who doesn’t?”
    When he retreated to the kitchen to put on the tea kettle, Mrs. McIver handed me an envelope. “For Terence,” she whispered.
    I found McIver in a small hotel on the rue Jacob and, amazingly, we actually got off to a promising start. He flipped the parcel onto his unmade bed, but slit open the envelope immediately. “You know how she earned this money?” he asked, seething. “These forty-eight dollars?”
    â€œI have no idea.”
    â€œBabysitting. Coaching backward kids in algebra or French grammar. Do you know anybody here, Barney?”
    â€œI’ve been here for three days and you’re the first person I’ve talked to.”
    â€œMeet me at the Mabillon at six and I’ll introduce you to some people.”
    â€œI don’t know where it is.”
    â€œMeet me downstairs, then. Hold on a minute. Does my father still run those ad hoc symposiums for students who laugh behind his back?”
    â€œSome are fond of him.”
    â€œHe’s a fool. Eager for me to be a failure. Like him. See you later.”
    Naturally I was sent an advance copy of
Of Time and Fevers
, compliments of the author. I’ve struggled through it twice now, marking the blatant lies and most offensive passages, and this morning I phoned my lawyer, Maître John Hughes-McNoughton. “Can I sue somebody for libel who has accused me, in print, of being a wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a penchant for violence, and probably a murderer as well?”
    â€œSounds like he got things just about right, I’d say.”
    No sooner did I hang up than Irv Nussbaum, United Jewish Appeal
capo di tutti capi
, phoned. “Seen this morning’s
Gazette
? Terrific news. Big-time drug lawyer was shot dead in his Jaguar, outside his mansion on Sunnyside last night, and it’s splashed all over the front page. He’s Jewish, thank God. Name’s Larry Bercovitch. Today’s going to be a hummer. I’m sitting here going through my pledge cards.”
    Next, Mike rang with one of his hot stock-market tips. I don’t know where my son gets his inside market information, but back in 1989 he tracked me down at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I was