In some respects, though, my life was on the upswing. I had received a modest advance for my book-in-progress, Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning, and fees for essays and reviews for various publications, Forum and International Studio among them, allowed me to move from my dismal flat in the Bronx to a two-room apartment over a store on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Disagreeably dilapidated though the building might be, the thirty-five dollars a month rent was friendly enough.

In addition, after a debilitating illness,* my health had recently improved. For months I had been weak and on edge, filled with hallucinations and phobias, and would surely have checked myself into a hospital if my monetary status had allowed. Instead, I ministered to myself in a singularly unromantic garret-a boardinghouse room in the Bronx-until I looked healthier and less drawn, and could come out among the civilized once again.

Perhaps a certain illness-induced gauntness emphasized my already Mephistophelian features-the receding nature of a reddish-brown hairline emphasized my intellectual stance, even if the former aspect was underscored by the devilish glint in my blue eyes and the spade-shaped if well-trimmed full beard, the upturned corners of my mustache perhaps hinting at my pro-German leanings.

Well over a decade later, my Germanophile’s view might seem harmless enough; on the eve of what would be the Great War, I suffered numerous negative repercussions, due to what I admit was an intellectual’s naivete. It seemed to me that reasonable men could tell the difference between Wagner and Kaiser Bill; that a mind fond of Mahler, Strauss, Goethe and Mann did not signify an insurgent heart.

This pro-German stance-added to my reputation as a prolific if outspoken columnist, with the boost of an H.L. Mencken recommendation-had brought me to this table. Of course it could also be said that Gavrillo Princzip made inevitable this appointment, when-on June 28, 1914, on a Sarajevo, Serbia, street-he shot and killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.