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 Job Interview by William Matthews 
						Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wifeHe would have written sonnets all his life?
 DON JUAN, III, 63-4
 
 "Where do you see yourself five years from now?"
 the eldest male member (or is "male member"
 a redundancy?) of the committee
 asked me. "Not here," I thought. A good thing I
 speak fluent Fog. I craved that job like some
 unappeasable, taunting woman.
 What did Byron's friend Hobhouse say after
 the wedding? "I felt as if I had buried
 a friend." Each day I had that job I felt
 the slack leash at my throat and thought what was
 its other trick. Better to scorn the job than ask
 what I had ever seen in it or think
 what pious muck I'd ladled over
 the committee. If they believed me, they
 deserved me. As luck would have it, the job
 lasted me almost but not quite five years.
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