The man was a tall, lean, haggard personification of fanaticism, bearing on his breast this label--A WANTON GOSPELLER--which betokened that he had dared to give interpretations of Holy Writ unsanctioned by the infallible judgment of the civil and religious rulers.

In '74, lean and haggard in Manhattan, I approached Alfred Kazin in the hall at Hunter College.  I had sent him something I'd written so this wasn't quite out of the blue and he took me to the teachers' lounge where (with fifteen minutes, maybe, tops) from breathless I built to manic before petering out.  I said things were falling into place all around me, that I could prove God's existence beyond doubt.  After running out of steam I said, "I suppose all this sounds crazy."

"No, your ideas aren't crazy.  They're incredibly boring.  They don't explain a single phenomenon to me."

Dismissal isn't easy but this was what I wanted to know, since I saw what I saw and had to see if I could make it make sense yet.  I couldn't, so I went back to work.  Years later I picked up New York Jew, third installment of Kazin's autobiography, flipped through it and caught a familiar phrase:  there, nearly intact (264-5), was the letter I'd sent with the typescript.

Since it's used to typify sixties overwrought, touching in its ardor but callow, I wasn't entirely flattered.  Mostly, though.