I told Jeanne that this was because I did not believe in the nonsense of pomp and ceremony. The truth was that I was ashamed of having no family to attend and I did not want Jeanne to witness this. I collected my master’s diploma from the president’s office on the following Monday and that was that. I made calls on the same Monday to arrange a number of job interviews. Although I had already committed to begin work at the University of Pennsylvania toward a PhD in September, I had lately begun to think about working awhile first. Thus, I was seeking a college teaching position and was already under serious consideration by two English departments, one in western Maryland and another at Cheney State, a historically black school in Pennsylvania. I then drove downtown to Blanton’s Books, a usedbook store with thousands of little-known titles. I bought a fairly recent softcover edition of a book that had been originally published in 1886: The Story of the Moors in Spain by the English writer Stanley Lane-Poole.
