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to talk to you about him.” I said, “I'll come up.” He said, “No. I want to talk to you down there.” So he came down, only a few blocks away. He came in and he began telling me what a wonderful boy Jason was, but he said, “He'll drive you crazy. He almost drove me crazy.” I said, “Why?" He said, “Every time I give him a raise it lasts for about two weeks and then he's asking for another one.” I asked him how much Jason was getting. I forget what it was, but it wasn't anything terrific. I said, “He must have started at about 18¢ a week.” Doug finally admitted that if he had started at a much higher price, things wouldn't have been so difficult. But Jason is a very aggressive young fellow anyway, and he got on Doug's nerves.

But it's worked out all right?

Oh, wonderfully. I call him “The cross I bear.” Jason is Jason. He's one of the brilliant young men on the New York literary scene. His wife is the co-editor of The New York Review of Books, and Jason's part of the Establishment. He lords it around, but everybody loves him. He's a very attractive, but an absolutely unmanageable young man. I mean he does things the way that he pleases; and if anybody tries to tell him how to do something another way, he's wasting his breath!

The immediate question that comes to my mind, being a