Gary palliser autobiography of a flea

110-405-73 -9/2005

Not the combination to my safe or athletic locker, but my route home. John Carlos Rowe, Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity, stodgily strolling across the USC campus to Parking Structure D, nodding pleasantly to students, most of whose names he cannot remember, smiling at a few colleagues, tossing his computer in the trunk of his little car, and puttering down the ramp to turn right on Jefferson, heading for the 110.

Think Oxford or Cambridge, a black, dented baby Austin, the professor's tweed and leather

700 Kings Road, Newport Beach, California, September 2005

Twenty-five pounds overweight, grey, thinning hair, sporting a blue knit shirt with a tiny white sailfish, the professor sits with his back to his desk and stares at a small, open box in the center of the floor. His study is paneled in rough cedar, the walls covered with fitted bookcases, filled with books, the peaked ceiling allowing just enough space to display framed diplomas, a handful of awards, and the covers of some of his books. He is in his early sixties, but still boyish in appearance, his near obesity giving him an aura of childishness, but his frown and narrowed eyes, scowling at that carton, perhaps originally for twelve bottles of cheap wine, betray his age.

The books are orderly and the desk neat, if not entirely uncluttered, so it is not quite the usual scholar's study with heaps of ungraded papers, unfinished manuscripts, and a chaos of remain suspensefully mysterious any longer, occasions for me to impress you with my neighborhood or stress my identity as the professor living on the shore of the lotus eaters. Inside there is a small notebook with a worn paper cover, an old pale green shoe box, two of its corners burst, a book in older, pebble textured black leather binding, and another book in a mildewed, pale blue cloth binding. There is a sheaf of letters, perhaps containing thirty sheets, with the edges of ol