Well, that is something.
You'll see something of the problems of the language
there of trying to imagine Raleigh
writing a letter to his son.
I'm not sure, I solved all of those problems adequately.
But to do in a modern, what really amounts
to a modern English in language if not syntax,
and imitation of the feel of that language.
It's tricky sense for me since his own prose
is so magnificent.
And I didn't precisely imitate that, I just suppressed it
as much as I could in this book so that it
wouldn't stand in terrible contrast
to what they were reading.
Well, while doing that, I was, that book
over a long period of time, doing some other things.
Some of which have come to light and others of which
are buried in trunks, and getting
on the backs of sheets of paper and so forth.
And one of the things was this three long stories,
which were put together in a little book
and brought out last Christmas.
Not widely known because, as I told one writing class,
my publisher explained to me that I was to consider it
a Christmas card from Doubleday to their friends and mine.
Not a large commercial venture or something like that,
and you'll see why in a few minutes.
Well, two or three the things that were necessary for me
in doing these things, which were done at different times,
were keeping touch with, if not sanity,
at least with the century that I was living in.
Every once in a while, I surfaced and noticed
stuff was going on in the 60s.
Otherwise, it might have missed the 60s completely.
These were, I'm only going to read from one,
but I came together in this case with three long stories
or short novels done according to different rules of the game.
One, a lead one, is a fable.
In the middle one is a story or tale straight.
And the last one is an attempt to bring up in manner and style
the medieval form of the Fab Leo.
But the fable one has to do with a man
that I'll read you a little about, and it's a fable.
Primarily, if it doesn't deal with talking animals and rocks,
it deals with a what if situation in human experience.
In this case, a very simple proposition
that goes a little bit beyond conventional possibility,
whatever that may be in these days.
Now, this proposition is as follows.
A rather serious minded young man,
at the beginning, by the name of Jacob Quirk who
has certain natural talent then develops this,
becomes an impersonator.
He has great success on things like television and nightclubs
up to a point.
But he gets more and more interested in the art
of impersonation rather than the people he's doing.
And finally gets into some trouble with his agent
and retires.
He has enough money to retire.
He's living in the city and just giving up on everything.
When he decides that he really are to take, he stopped short.
He ought to take his art form of impersonation
as far as you could possibly take it, which
is what he proceeds to do.
That is to say, by the time we're in chapter two,
is discovered how he can literally turn himself
into anybody anytime.
Some of you grew up with Captain Kangaroo
will remember Tom terrific.
Well, this is a Jacob Quirk.
It's a little bit like Tom terrific
and whom I'd forgotten about.
He get to the end of this and how to end the story,
tom terrific was a big help.
But when we pick up work, he has just
learned that he can do this and rehearsed himself into it.
Because this is the beginning of his first real, real
impersonation in the neighborhood where he lives.