160
PARTISAN REVIEW
At the beginning, Stanley found this version of domesticity un–
usually convenient. It satisfied both his strong feelings for freedom
and his indifference to responsibility. His days were free to roam
and think and talk, while his evenings were filled with serious and
sustained conversation, as Dorothy kept open house for anybody
who wanted to drop in, serving food and drinks and urging every–
one to stay on into the night. Sometimes she would herself go to sleep
but tell her guests to go on talking-she meant listening-to Stanley.
Dorothy quickly made Stanley's opinions her own, and soon
began to take over many of his ways, particularly his ironic twists
and sudden shifts, and his ability to expand an irrelevancy into a
major thesis. But since her adaptation was literal and excessive, she
became an extreme and slightly caricatured version of Stanley'S
personality. Where, for example, Stanley presented himself as a
bold and original thinker, who demolished his opponents by show–
ing that their opinions were superficial, Dorothy would simply tell
people in her strong, high-pitched voice, that they were stupid or
stuffy or that they were "time-servers," who had become parasites
on the creative life. She also cultivated a revolutionary personality,
which meant in practice that she was free to insult anyone at any
time, and people who disliked her often described her as an
enfant
terrible
by marriage.
Stanley and Dorothy lived together for three years, with very
little friction and little passion, because neither of them knew exactly
what to give or expect from the other. Still, they might have gone
on, if Stanley had not received an invitation one fall from a small
gir1's college in the West to give a course that year. A professor at
the college, having heard of Stanley's expository gifts and his
ability to keep a purely voluntary audience enthralled, had sug–
gested, in line with the new practice of putting on display a few
creative minds, that the hiring of a person like Stanley might be
an interesting experiment.
Stanley had to decide quickly, but he was torn. He was sus–
picious of all places beyond commuting distance, and he thought
of the rest of the country as an alien land, full of strangers, a place
of exile from New York. He had a weak sense of geography, and
he would ask people exactly where the college was, as though he
were trying to determine its relation to Alaska. At the same time,
