“Sometimes the sordidness of his present existence, not to mention the stifling, clammy heat of the apartment his finances had forced him to take, on the third floor of an ugly old house on Binghamton’s West Side—‘ the nice part of town,’ everybody said (God have mercy on those who had to live in the bad parts)— made Peter Mickelsson clench his square yellow teeth in anger and once, in a moment of rage and frustration greater than usual, bring down the heel of his fist on the heavy old Goodwill oak table where his typewriter, papers, and books were laid out, or rather strewn. He’d intended to split the thing in two, though perhaps the intent was not quite conscious.”