Under normal circumstances, I would never have permitted him to plunge into those errors which have since deformed and undermined his work.
As ever innocently self-absorbed, Peter and Susan failed to grasp my simple need for a roof over my head, thereby compelling me to waste a fortune on a room in the conference hotel, where a cup of coffee cost the equivalent of three dollars! (On our gathering’s second day, a Sussex University attendee let me sleep on his floor.) Had it not been for a treacherous attempt to dismantle my Department and reassign me to literature survey courses on the part of an Assistant Dean named Hartley Smoot acting in concert with two convention-bound members of Popham’s English department, and if by evil coincidence I had not been forced at the same time to deal with the false, hysterical allegations made by an erotomaniac female student, I should have steered my old friend back onto the responsible, reasonable path of the honest artisan. On the one occasion during those desperate years when I did get to London (I had the honor of giving the keynote address to our International Congress), my twice-daily telephone calls to the Straubs’ new and apparently quite attractive house in the Crouch End area met, when answered at all, with rushed, harried-sounding excuses concerning previous engagements, visiting relatives and the like. How I wish that a crisis at Popham had not made the years 19 a living hell for me, sapping my energies and demanding all the concentration not already claimed by the preparation of lectures, research for and writing of papers, the demands of students, appearances at Popular Culture symposia and the relentless tedium of academic committees.
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