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XI Richard,
Masako, and Ianthe
When Richard came back from Boulder, Colorado with Masako, none of us
could really believe it. His divorce from Aki had been so horribly painful
and Masako was so much younger than he was--and so much more innocent. She
had been doing graduate work at Hofstra--comparing Yeats' plays and
Japanese noh drama. I think Richard was at his happiest when he was with
either Masako or his Hawaiian Japanese friend Eunice. One night at my
house, he went into a long tracking session about how he would like to
live with both of them at once. (Judy went to bed and slammed the door.)
It was pretty interesting when Richard's daughter, Lanthe, came to stay
that summer. She is about the same age as Masako, so here Richard was with
his lovely daughter and lovely lover living there like international
sisters. One night in the wee hours, Richard read us "The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock." I was surprised that he liked Eliot so much since, in
general, he avoided academic poetry. Richard also liked Robert Lowell's
Notebooks; he didn't like Sylvia Plath, not so much because of her work as
because of the fact that she killed herself with her children in the
house.
Gorgo's Brautigan Stories Index
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