Pelkey, now fully dressed, puts a steaming pot of real coffee, a cup and saucer, and two slices of buttered toast, onto a table at which Hemingway is sitting, reading.

” What’s the book, general?”

” Well done, Archie.”

” Hell, I know a book when I see a fellah reading one.”

” Well, this book, Professor Pelkey, is called Ulysses, and was written by an old friend of mine called James Joyce. He’s dead now.”

” Is that so?”

” That is so.”

” So what’s it about, this book by your dead friend?”

” It’s about one day in Dublin, back in 1904, a day seen from the viewpoint of several people, most notably Stephen Dedalus, Buck Mulligan, Leopald Bloom and his wife, Molly.”

” Looking at the thickness of the book, general, it must have been one hell of a long day.”

” Archie, just pour me a cup of coffee.”

” Yes sir, general.”

Pelkey pours the coffee and starts eating Hemingway’s toast.

” This friend of yours, how does he rate in the scribbling scales, say on a one to ten, in comparison to, say, Zane Grey?”

” Zane Grey?”

” Yeh, you know the guy…”

” Yeh, I know the guy. Pioneer of the Frontier, and all that stuff.”

” Great book. So how does this friend of yours, this Joyce fellah rate, in comparison?”

” Well, he don’t rate, not in comparison. Grey wrote westerns and some great books on fishing too, got them all. But you can’t compare the two. Joyce was an innovator, a great literary stylist. Grey was a teller of moral tales of the Western Frontier.”

” Ain’t there a comparison there? They were both pioneers in a way. One, Grey, a pioneer of the western, of the re-telling of the struggle for land against all the odds, in other words, as you say, moral tales about people under stress, not unlike your own work? And that Joyce, if what you say is true, was a pioneer of style, and therefore a writer who broke through literary frontiers. Surely they have this in common?”

Hemingway takes a sip of his coffee and looks at Pelkey.

” Where you read that, Archie?”

” Didn’t read it, just kind a worked it out. Am I right?”

” Sure you’re right, but I ain’t never thought of it myself till now. And which books of mine have you read?”

” Most, leastways bits of most, although I reckon To Have and Have Not is your best…”