There was a toothsome South American girl present, to whom I had been expressing my views on the prominent literary lights of the era, Borges included, to her evident pleasure. (I had a higher opinion of Borges then than I do now.) Tim, in effect, informed us that we should stop discussing the talented but trivial works of Nabokov and Borges and move on to higher, finer things, namely, the occultist fantasies of Aleister Crowley. I have never been able to discover in the writings of this jerk anything memorable or admirable, although, unlike most occultists, he was, like Tim, literate. (Jerking off, he said in a deathbed confession, was the secret of his success.)..........

--"How the fuck any self-respecting intellectual acid head can get all excited about a fucking idiot like Aleister Crowley, for Christ's sake, and ignore Nabokov is beyond my fucking comprehension, God fucking damn it to hell," I said to Wendy, who had joined me---------------------