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mankind’s talent for humor, for laughter, is possibly our highest talent.”
     
    January 4, 1974. Dreams at the turn of the year: disturbing as always. Paralysis, nightmare. Forcing myself to wake—and then the relief as consciousness floods in. Without consciousness (control of the mind, the muscles, perception) we are in a kind of infantile hell.
     
    New class—“Literature & Psychology”—many students, some of them lively & provocative. Teaching is a kind of intellectual feast. A kind of party, circus, carnival; sense of motion; pleasantly crowded; filled with voices, faces, intense young minds. So many questions…! Fascinating. I can see why certain friends […] can’t write while they teach. They teach their very selves and nothing is left over. It’s a temptation.
    […]
     
    February 3, 1974. …Finished “Black Eucharist,” absorbing to write but not very likeable. * A quite impersonal tale.
     
    “A man is what he is thinking all day long”—Emerson.
     
    A night of many dreams. In one, an angel falls to earth…touches me…frightens me with his/her terrible reality. I had been thinking to myself, like a good Zen student, that the dream-image was only an illusion in my brain, nothing to be concerned about, and the angel responded by nudging me. “It’s only a spectre” I said but the spectre rebelled against being so categorized.
     
    A haunting dream. Many possible meanings. Complete & lovely as a poem.
     
    February 28, 1974. …Wrote “The Spectre,” poem re. angel & dream. * The reality of psychic powers.
     
    Have been informed of A.K.’s continued harassment. O well: silly stuff indeed.
     
    April 11, 1974. …“Seizure” chosen by Borestone Awards, Best Poems of 1973. † Based on the heart seizure & related observations.
     
    April 12, 1974. …Visited Kalamazoo College. Conrad Hilberry & Herb Bogard, and others; extremely congenial, pleasant.
     
    May 15, 1974. …Met Philip Roth. Went to his apartment, then out to lunch. Attractive, funny, warm, gracious: a completely likeable person. We talked about books, movies, other writers, New York City, Philip’s fame (and its amusing consequences), his experiences in Czechoslovakia meeting with writers. Ray and I liked him very much. His apartment on 81st St. is large and attractive, near the Met. Art gallery. He has another house (and another life, one gathers) in Connecticut. My Life as a Man : irresistibly engaging. ‡ But one wonders at Philip’s pretense that it isn’t autobiographical….
     
    May 20, 1974. …Fake suicide note from A.K.; caused me a few minutes’ upset before Ray discerned it was fictitious. A pathetic hoax…. Still, it might mean he’s decided to leave me alone. The suicide note blamed me for his death, then went on to berate me for not having written a review of his book, etc., etc. I wrote back to him saying I was sorry, very sorry, but couldn’t he leave me alone—couldn’t the two of us forget about each other? Don’t expect any reply.
     
    Why would a homosexual care so much about a woman?—his homosexuality is so brazen, so self-congratulatory. Perhaps he dreads being a latent heterosexual….
     
    May 23, 1974. …Anniversary; wine & cheese party at school; pleasant conversation with the usual people: Gene Mc. N., Al MacL., Colin A., etc. * I live in an easygoing masculine world at the University. My closest friends are men and have been for the past fourteen years, with the exception of Liz Graham and Kay Smith, whom I like very much; † but they’re not “colleagues.”
     
    “Suicide hoax” in “Paradise: A Post-Love Story.” Also, the general emotional field of the proposed novel, Death-Festival . ‡ (The sense that someone wants me dead…fantasizes my death. Chilling. Crazy.)
     
    May 28, 1974. Death-Festival taking form slowly; people emerging. Yvonne changes shape & character. Hugh the surprising one. Stephen still shadowy. Andrew becoming more and more witty, amusing.