Harrison had spent the first months of their time at Roarke waiting for the subject of Eli’s book, and its critical response, and the coverage of its critical response, to arise, and he was more than a little surprised when it didn’t. Were none of these brilliant classmates paying attention? Was he the only one whose antennae had picked up this exceptional intellectual, already part of a national dialogue, who was actually living among them? Apparently so. He himself had said nothing, except for one November evening when he looked up from his book to discover that he and Eli were alone together, the last two in the lounge after dinner. Before he could actually consider what he was about to do, let alone choose his words, he blurted out that he had read Against Youth and had thought it very sound and very well written.
“Thank you,” said Eli, barely looking up from his own book.
And then, as if this response had been at all encouraging, which even a dolt could have seen it was not, Harrison heard himself ask about the no-photo-on-the-book-jacket thing, which he totally understood, because the work was the work, and that was what mattered, not some preconceived assumption about ethnicity or a given view of history. But, he stammered, his discomfort obvious, making that choice must have been difficult. Had it been difficult?
“Not at all,” Eli Absalom Stone had said, turning a page. This had closed their discussion, and, it seemed, the topic as a whole, and Harrison resolved—again—that he was absolutely not going to fawn over Eli Absalom Stone, because Eli Absalom Stone clearly did not wish to be fawned over.
Then one night in January, Carlos—of all people—announced that he’d just found a book in the school library by Eli! Eli Absalom Stone! Like, their own Eli Absalom Stone （as if there could be another author by that name）， and Wasn’t this so cool? and Why didn’t you tell us, man?
Carlos was a person of great enthusiasms, but Harrison had never seen him this excited.
The other students, every one of them, looked mystified.
“Wait, you wrote a book?” Bryce actually said.
Harrison, repelled and embarrassed, focused on his hands.
“What’s it about?” said Tony.
Eli looked vague. “Just some preoccupations. Juvenilia, actually. You know,” he said. As if they all had collections of essays based on their adolescent musings underway or awaiting imminent publication by major publishers, to be discussed in the pages of the New Yorker and the Nation and parsed by the likes of Leonard Lopate and Charlie Rose.
“I’m going to start it right away,” Carlos assured them all, as if they were anxious about this very thing.
The setting for all this was the regular evening meeting, which took place in the lounge every night after dinner and before they dispersed to final chores, work, occasional leisure, and finally sleep. It was where ordinary concerns were raised, occasionally academic but also related to the practical cogs and mechanisms of the farm and school: library procedures, problems with the milking machine, the hiring of faculty, the reading of application essays by those hundreds of students hoping to attend Roarke the following fall. Sometimes, this time was used to make requests or update projects, like Bryce proposing a trip to see Angels in America in Boston or Tony reporting on his experimental fall planting of onions, overwintering in the north pasture. To Harrison these topics were rarely scintillating, and often, by the end of his physically and intellectually challenging days, it was tough to sit still for—let alone care about—things like onions. Sometimes he even found himself nodding off in one of the old armchairs. He wasn’t nodding off now.
Carlos did, in fact, start reading Against Youth that very evening, and as the weeks passed he took pains to assure the rest of them that the book was great! really well written! And say how cool was it that Eli had grown up without television and computers and internet and all that kind of thing, and was still so engaged with everything, their generation and its preoccupations, weaknesses, failings, discarded potential! I mean, Eli came from, like, a shack. On a mountain. And never went to school!