Word: harold
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Harold is a writer. Although rejected by the Advocate (a local magazine devoted to literature), he sold a poem to a Greenwich Village little magazine for a free subscription, and an article (under a psuedonym) on trailer-camping to a Western magazine for $120. That $120 has to sustain him for the summer, at the pace of a dollar...
...Harold sleeps in the Common. He awakes each morning to the sun, a stomach growl, and the stolid stone gaze of Lincoln watching Garden Street--at about seven-thirty. He usually steals a newspaper on the way to the Square (Dick Tracy fascinates him), and eats breakfast at the Bick...
Eating is a serious business--a matter of man's ultimate adaptability, involving both a sinister intuitive sense and a strong constitution. Breakfast is a cup of coffee (with cream for added nourishment) and a ten-cent side order of buttered toast. (Harold watches with a surly viligance; there's always the chance that the grim, spindly individual who passes for an all-night cafeteria cook might slight students on butter.) Harold is careful not to tear apart and devour the bread; his meal is precise and aristocratic, punctuated with frequent glasses of free water...
...shoe-shine boys, the little league, the baby carriage brigade and the woman shoppers; the subterranean rumble of the subway, the distant cacophony of bells, the mingled shouts of children and clash of pin-ball machines. Saddened (perhaps by the morning's news or the "No Loitering" sign), Harold sometimes sits at the corner table by the window and counts green book bags passing by or reads Kafka or sublimates with secretaries on their way to work...
...better moods he tours bookshops, or inspects unframed reproductions. (In his room in Adams House Harold has mounted a picture of Dover Beach--clipped from an insurance ad--on the laundry cardboard from his button-down shirts.) Occasionally he wanders to the river, looking for dandelions--the univer- sal symbol of simple innocence and purity. More often he stands before the plate-glass display or Cardullo's--with a libidinous twitch at the Italian sausage...