For most of my life, I’ve heard nothing but scorn for the networks of “old boys” that were said to govern American life in politics, education, entertainment, and business. I am also aware that, because I was the grandson of Italian immigrants, and because my parents and their generation had only just managed to break into the middle class, I was not going to be included in a lot of those networks. We didn’t have the money, and we didn’t know anyone important.
Nor have I ever sought, or enjoyed, the company of people who seemed to expect membership in such networks as by birthright. At Princeton, I found the snobbishness of wealth among the prep school graduates at best faintly absurd, at worst insufferable. When I became a professor, I did not frequent academic conferences to worm my way into some inner circle of literary critics. For better and for worse, when it comes to such things, I am a loner. I have done all my work on my own and mostly never bothered even to tell my departmental colleagues what I was doing, or that I was doing anything at all, or that I had done something after the fact.
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