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degrees in Literatoor from Vassar. They’d come South to learn about Real Life. “I’ve never slept in bed before with a fifty-two-year-old sportswriter in a hound’s-tooth raglan-sleeve overcoat,” my Vassar slit informed me. I said, “That is because you have never been in Florida before during spring training in a year when the temperature dropped.” “Oh,” she said, and wrote it in her diary, I suppose.
    Now she was measuring Hem’s sail. “It’s a big one,” she called over to us. “Seven foot eight inches.”
    â€œThrow it back,” said Hem and the Vassar slit laughed and so did the Cuban kid who was our mate that year.
    â€œFor a waitress with a degree in Literatoor,” Hem said, “she has a sense of humor. She will be all right.”
    Then he took up the subject of the Great American Novel again, joking that it would probably be me of all the sons of bitches in the world who could spell cat who was going to write it. “Isn’t that what you sportswriters think, Frederico? That some day you’re going to get off into a little cabin somewhere and write the G.A.N.? Could do it now, couldn’t you, Frederico, if only you had the Time.”
    During that week of squall in March of that year Hem would talk till dawn about which son of a bitch who could spell cat was going to write the G.A.N. By the end of the week he had narrowed it down to a barber in the basement of the Palmer House in Chicago who knew how to shave with the grain.
    â€œNo hot towels. No lotion. Just shaves with the grain and washes it off with witch hazel.”
    â€œAny man can do that, can write the Great American Novel,” I said.
    â€œYes,” said Hem, filling my glass, “he is the one.”
    â€œHow is he on the light trim?” I asked.
    â€œNot bad for Chicago,” Hem said, giving the barber his due.
    â€œYes,” I said, “it is a rough town for a light trim where there are a lot of Polacks.”
    â€œIn the National League,” said Hem, “so is Pittsburgh.”
    â€œYes,” I said, “but you cannot beat the dining room in the Schenley Hotel for good eats.”
    â€œThere is Jimmy Shevlin’s in Cincinnati,” Hem said.
    â€œWhat about Ruby Foo’s chop suey joint in Boston?”
    â€œGive me Lew Tendler’s place in Philadelphia,” said Hem.
    â€œThe best omelette is the Western,” I said.
    â€œThe best dressing is the Russian,” Hem said.
    â€œGuys who drink Manhattans give me the creeps.”
    â€œLiverwurst on a seeded roll with mustard is my favorite sandwich.”
    â€œI don’t trust a dame who wears those gold sandals.”
    â€œGive me a girl who goes in swimming without a bathing cap if a slit has to hold my money.”
    â€œI’d rather kill an hour in a newsreel theater than a whorehouse.”
    Yes, over a case of cognac we could manage to touch upon just about every subject that men talk about when they’re alone, from homburgs to hookers to Henry Armstrong … But always that year the conversation came around to the G.A.N. Hem had it on his brain. One night he would tell me that the hero should be an aviator; the next night an industrialist; then a surgeon; then a cowboy. One time it would be a book about booze, the next broads, the next Mother Nature. “And to think,” he said, on the last night of that seven-day squall, “some dago barber sucking on Turns in the basement of the Palmer House is going to write it.” I thought he was kidding me again about the barber until he threw his glass into the window that looked onto the bay.
    Now he was telling me that I was going to write it. It seemed to me a good compliment to ease out from under.
    â€œGladly, Hem,” I said, thinking to needle him a little in the process, “but I understand that they wrote it already.”
    â€œWho is this they,