The Shadbolt house on Hornby Island, with its big windows, its cedar panelled interior, its Middle Eastern carpets and its stacks of New Yorkers. The image above is from the August 5th, 1972 issue: an older man and a younger woman (note the relative measures) have just sat down to dinner. Her mouth is open, his is not. I look at the caption below:
"What were you like when you were a nobody, Mr. Tyler?"
Because the question is asked of Mr. Tyler, my eyes go to his face first, looking for the face I might make if asked such a question, embarrassed to be thought of as "nobody"'s antonym, resentful to be cast that way, feeling reduced, ridiculed and, once engulfed in these feelings, reminded of the power in passive-aggression, and why did I agree to this editor's invitation to dine out on Little, Brown's credit card anyway?
Something about the flatness of the man's face. If he was leering, the narrative might be closer to what we expect in the Weinstein era, and we would be done with it, our suspicions confirmed. But he is not leering; if anything, his expression is careful, respectful, perhaps on the verge of bemusement, which is a form of condescension, even if that bemusement is yet another transitional stage, towards a topic change, a return to what we were talking about at the festival, about the writing, about the conversation that is the literature of our time.
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