Sublime

He read Ask the Dust by John Fante—an L.A. novel he had never heard of—which his assistant got from the public library downtown—and finally found what he was looking for: “I just knew that was the way those kids talked to each other—the rhythms, cadences, racism.”

I asked Ernest about Harold and Pat and he explained that Harold Loeb was Princeton from a very rich New York family, had been on the boxing and wrestling teams in college. He had literary aspirations, even started a little magazine in Paris called Broom. Fiercely devoted to Duff, very jealous of Pat, who alternated weekends with Duff.