The Confidante

摘要

Notice of selection for honors by esteemed peers at an international conference might be expected to palliate an interminable winter, but on a man consumed in rumination that his professional success had been paid for in personal happiness, it had quite the opposite effect. I hadn't been myself in months -distracted at work, behaving oddly, with unaccountable motives - and news of the tribute, which was of the type conceived rather more to stir up conference attendance than to give any particular joy to the honoree, threw me into a near-paralysis, wherein matters mat had preoccupied me for the better part of three decades now seemed completely removed from the real business of living.