a hobo's life

"I come to a period in which I was literally a wandering student, a steady occupant of libraries, leading actually a hobo's life, but with the outward leisure of gentleman and scholar. I supported myself by small jobs of free-lancing or other efforts of the brain, and what I lived on is all but incredible. I met many people, but I made few ties. I may seem to have been derelict, but such was not the case, not so much as when I was working up to be a buyer for Boshnack's. I was waiting and watching constantly for some opening, that I might become a part of American intellectual life. When I got tired of one library, I packed my brief case and took up the hitchhiker's station along the road."

~~ from East Goes West by Younghill Kang

conversation was the firebrand

"Senzar was an Indo-Oxford product, and was now in America studying engineering. Of course, he was a fanatic patriot, but his words were very much in the clouds, you could not make out whether he intended to go back to India or not. So long as he kept silent, Senzar looked handsome, poetic and sad. And at first he kept silent, rolling around the splendid melancholy of his great dark eyes, so silent that everybody was sympathetic, thinking him shy. But with Senzar it was not shyness. His idea of conversation was the firebrand, elemental attack, mortal combat. On any subject he was ready to die. He was just looking around for an opponent. I do not know if English domination has made Hindus that way—I suppose so—for most of them are ready to go off at a moment's notice. Anyhow, Hindus and Far-Easterners did not get along well together in Boston schools. It is thought by some Orientals that Hindus lack humor and proportion. What Hindus think of other Orientals, I do not know. But Senzar soon fastened on me as his opponent. Suddenly he began questioning me about my college."

~~ from East Goes West by Younghill Kang

The Buyer

"To be a buyer is the dream of every clerk in every department store in America. And I was in almost the biggest one of all. Boshnack's sold the littlest thing as well as the biggest. There were buyers for needles, for rugs, for books, for china, for airplanes. Each buyer was given so many inches of space in the big store. This was his kingdom. Just like a small proprietor, he paid for all that went into his space, and kept track through his clerks of all that went out . . . except that he made no profits. In his department he was looked up to almost as much as Mr. Boshnack himself. When he passed, the underlings said in a hushed voice, "The Buyer!"

~~ from East Goes West by Younghill Kang

scattered pages

"All during the summer months, I was like a hungry cow eating grass in a valley. There was a public library within five minutes' walk, and also I could use the various college and university libraries of Boston and Cambridge. I browsed from shelf to shelf—sociology, philosophy, poetry, anything that took my fancy. I consulted only my appetite. Shaw, Gibbons, Wells, Sinclair Lewis, Thackeray, Thomas Hardy, everything in odd assortment . . . the Brontes, the works of Jane Austen . . . the Americans, Hawthorne, Cooper, Poe, Melville, Whitman. I read translations of Plato and Aristotle. Besides what I read thoroughly, I touched scattered pages of thousands of books."

~~ from East Goes West by Younghill Kang 

so thin and underfed

"Every once in a while at the hotel there would be a banquet. A banquet it was indeed, even for those lined up at the back door, the extra helps. Sometimes as many as twenty additional hands were called in. I noticed that at a banquet—behind the scenes at least—nobody seemed to get tired of eating, ever. At the beginning we were idle for a few minutes sometimes. Then each contrived to get a handful of nuts or a swallow of coffee . . . taking our last course first. I could see why the extra helpers ate. They all looked so thin and underfed, I think they had no other job. Day after day just waiting for banquets.Maybe they called at all the big hotels. Maybe they hunted garbage. I don't know."

~~ from East Goes West by Younghill Kang 

careful as a cat

"Doctor Lovejoy himself used to wash cups after Sunday tea. He was as careful as a cat about not getting his hands wet at the same time. He would run the hot water from the faucet into those thin cups, then daintily and delicately turn them around without wetting even a finger-nail. Last of all, he would peer like a botanist into them, to see if any sugar were left."

~~ from East Goes West by Younghill Kang

He was tired of science. . .

"Ian had been studying to be an engineer, before the war, but his service in France seemed to have knocked all desire for engineering out of him. He was tired of science, he said.

"'Why?' I questioned.

"'Well, in times of peace, it takes away a man's job. In times of war, it takes away his life.'"

~~ from East Goes West by Younghill Kang