Ami WlMt Will Oct the OoMfisb?nI’i’iiiii (;jlirni-iii:i. llii’ >liili- which lalnIhi’ W:L IO pi-rs()n:il riillillninil aiul lilu-r-nhe does not rtiention post-FY34 events:nin the moment are the past and presentnfound, wrote Eliot, but that was poetq?nand this is fiction.nNonetheless, that is how he does it,nleaping into being ex nihilo, like a culturallynignorant Martian. And yet, onengets rather used to it, and even becomesnfond of it. If, finally, it is a bit precious,ntoo studiedly noncommital and expressivenof that mythical entity called Innocencenthat is ever longed for by Americans,nit does leave the reader with a feelingnoi being there. The only odd thing isnthat he doesn’t seem to have come fromnanywhere himself: he likes Spengler,nhasn’t heard of Ka&a (that would be expectednfor one then ignorant of German),nand that’s about it. He seems to haventaken on a persona rather like the onenWhitman adopted occasionally, a masknbehind which he only reported what hensaw; of course there is bias in that too,nsince what one chooses to report, howevernobjectively, amounts to editing.nBut there seems very little of that,neven: almost by accident (it was rainingnin Paris, he couldn’t understand conversations)nhe chose Vienna over France,nand set out to learn German. He metnpeople, bought an excellent bike, had anroom overlooking a Blind Garten wherenstately people strode carefully about; henlost weight, heard a few “HeU Hitiers,”n20inChronicles of Culturen1JKI:KM. Ci III HI: 1natioii througli clclilx-ralo liiiklk’ssiu’ysn;IIKI LDtivcnitnl (.livortw i-onii-.s a i-pi)rlnof an iinl’