It was a glorious early summer, all blossom and cuckoos. Lynne served herself gin and cider and sternly pronounced that she was not, in future, to be crossed. Neither of us attributed her condition to alcohol.

I first met J.P. Donleavy in July, 1961 at a garden party in London on what was believed to be the hottest day on record. The party was given on my behalf as Director of the Atlantic Monthly Press

Late in March, in the year I would turn thirty, he wrote me a letter about sea monsters.

He and I had never met, and he addressed me, on the stationery of The Nation magazine, formally, with a colon after my name, and signed himself George G. Kirstein, over his title, Publisher.

That year, we were going to France in June—small, out-of-the-way places in Guyenne and the Dordogne—and so I decided to brush up my college French (se remettre le Français que jai apprit à I’université), even though I realize it’s a losing game. As everyone knows, the French are delighted to encounter one’s college French — they either ignore it and ask in plain English, “What language are you trying to speak.