Second Skin

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This essay was read at a memorial service for John Hawkes, “Remembering The Passion Artist: A John Hawkes Tribute,” on April 13, 1999, at Brown University and is published here courtesy of the author.

Twenty years ago I arrived on this campus intent on fulfilling my father’s greatest fear (while making him pay for it) of seeing his son ruined by the Liberal Eastern Establishment. At the time, I wasn’t entirely clear what the Liberal Eastern Establishment was. If you’d have asked me to list the attributes of its members, I might have mentioned the wearing of broadcloth shirts, the tendency to have crystal decanters on the sideboard, or to speak in the manner of William Bucklcy, Jr. (no liberal but an easterner) where the facial expressions seem to arise from a convergence of intellectual effort and intestinal discomfort. One thing was certain, however. The chief recommendation of the Liberal Eastern Establishment lay in my father’s opposition to it.

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