The line between McClure’s eyes tensed-the bluntness of Rumely’s expression understandably offended him.

“If I’m not overstepping,” I said, “surely you don’t need to work, Mr. McClure. . ” He was approaching sixty and most certainly was comfortably wealthy.

“I want to work, sir,” McClure said. “I need to work. Money has never been my objective-communicating progressive ideas to the public, that, sir, is my calling.”

“I understand the impulse,” I said. “I’ve hoped to educate the unwashed masses myself. . not in political areas, where I admit a certain lack of knowledge and even interest. But in the arts-painting, literature.”

“That’s why we’re considering you,” McClure said, “for our literary editor.”

“Book reviews, short essays,” Rumely explained, “publishing announcements, gossip. . ”

In those days, “gossip” meant reporting the books writers were working on, or travels they might be taking for research purposes-not peccadilloes, sexual or otherwise.

“I’m the man for the job,” I said with no modesty. “I feel an affinity with you, Mr. McClure-in our shared desire to make a difference in the world. If I could persuade readers to turn from romance novels to Joseph Conrad, if I could move them to protest censorship, as pertains to Dreiser and others-”

“All well and good, sir,” McClure cut in. “But you have a reputation for a sharp tongue-for sardonic, even sarcastic condescension.”

“Guilty,” I said with a shrug.

“I would not censor you, but I would insist that you strive to abandon any mean-spiritedness in your psyche.”

“I was younger then,” I said, referring to my controversial tenure at a Smart Set, as well as my biting Los Angeles Times writings, which had put me on the map.

McClure’s eyes appraised me unblinkingly. “How old are you, sir?”

“Thirty-three,” I said.*