“As a child I dreamed of becoming a writer. My father did not approve. ‘These are not the ambitions of a man,’ he told me. He liked to beat me with a rake, or sometimes a trellis. When he was in a bad mood, he would pick up my infant sister and use her to beat me. He called this ‘saving time.’ Often I prayed for his death. Yet when it came I was heartbroken. Who can understand love?” He sounded far away. Pfefferkorn noticed that he had dropped the “I, the individual.” “Alas, I did not become a writer. I became a scientist. I subjugated myself for the sake of serving the Party. Literature was not needed, nuclear power was needed. Still, my greatest pleasure was reading. While a student in Moscow I happened to come upon your book. Sir, I was captivated. I was captured. I was ensnared and entranced. This story of a young man whose father ridicules his attempts to find meaning in art—this story was my story. Hungrily I awaited the sequel.
