Paul Slazinger

Paul Slazinger is a novelist, occasional creative-writing teacher, and wounded World War II veteran whose friendship with Rabo Karabekian is marked by mutual need, unspoken disappointments, and a late crisis that brings Paul back into Rabo’s home. The narrator calls him his only friend, but also reveals that he has never read an entire book by him: their closeness is genuine, though not founded on the reciprocal artistic esteem their public appearances might suggest.

Identity and Circumstances

Paul is a veteran of World War II, like Rabo, and lives alone in a house beside Rabo’s former home in Springs. He comes over almost every day, sometimes spending time around the property and sometimes withdrawing to read on the far side of the potato barn. Rabo doubts that Paul writes much anymore, while noting that he himself has stopped painting altogether. Their shared status as wounded veterans forms an important bond, but the narration offers little detail about Paul’s wartime experience beyond that identification.

Paul has no money and depends substantially on Rabo for food. He eats supper at Rabo’s house four or five times a week and helps himself to food from the refrigerator and fruit bowls during the day. Rabo repeatedly proposes that Paul sell his house, move in, and use the proceeds as spending money. He presents cohabitation as a practical arrangement between two older men who expect not to have wives or romantic partners again. Paul’s consistent objection is that he can write only at home; he also calls Rabo’s house a museum, suggesting that its abundance and display make it unsuitable as a place to work.

Literary Ambition and Irony

Paul’s self-conception as a writer becomes especially visible in his encounters with Circe Berman, who has come to the Hamptons seeking peace and quiet to write a biography of her husband, a Baltimore brain surgeon. Paul has published eleven novels and treats her as an amateur. His confidence in his own standing as a novelist is set against her unpretentious purpose, and his dismissive attitude becomes ironic when he later proves to have spent the summer reading her fiction.

After discovering that Circe is Polly Madison, Paul tells Rabo that he read all of her books and admired them while treating her as unintelligent, unaware of her identity. He becomes more enthusiastic than she is about renovating Rabo’s foyer, even proposing that the woodwork be painted brown if that would please Rabo. His belated admiration is extravagant rather than restrained: during a later period of mental disturbance, he calls the Polly Madison books the greatest literature since Don Quixote and describes Circe as the Homer of the bubblegum crowd. The contrast between Paul’s earlier condescension and his later fervor makes his literary judgments part of the relationship’s comedy, while his willingness to champion Circe’s work also becomes one of the missions he claims for himself.

Paul’s literary life is shadowed by Rabo’s confession that he has never read a whole book by his supposedly close friend. Rabo owns Paul’s books, displayed on a shelf in the library with inscriptions celebrating their long friendship, but has read mostly reviews and believes he knows their general outlines. He explains his reluctance by saying that Paul’s reckless conduct in life makes it difficult for him to approach Paul’s written reflections on love, hate, God, humanity, and moral consequences with solemnity. Rabo adds that Paul has never honored him as a painter or collector. Their friendship thus contains a durable gap between the signs of public loyalty and the private absence of artistic recognition.

Friendship and Conflict

Paul’s bond with Rabo is sustained less by shared critical admiration than by company, food, and practical care. Rabo describes Paul as a friend who is his alone, in contrast to the friends he had with Edith, and repeatedly offers him a place in the house. The offers carry both affection and frustration: Rabo wants to turn Paul’s frequent visits and dependence into a settled arrangement, while Paul protects the separation of his own home as a condition of writing.

The friendship also includes an accusation. When Rabo discovers that Circe has been remaking the foyer, he says it suddenly feels as though everyone is his enemy. Paul answers that he is certainly Rabo’s enemy and asks why Rabo did not tell him Circe was Polly Madison. Paul explains that he had recognized what she was doing and begged her not to proceed because he feared it might harm Rabo, whereas she believed the renovation would make him feel younger. His declaration is both a pointed rebuke over Rabo’s concealment and evidence that he has been watching over his friend, even when he disagrees with the course of events.

Crisis and Return to Rabo’s Home

Paul’s return to Rabo’s household comes after a severe episode at his own home. He wakes neighbors by calling for help from different windows, and a rescue squad from the Springs Volunteer Fire Department takes him to Rabo’s house instead of the Veterans Administration hospital at Riverhead after Paul promises he will be all right there. The volunteers bring him in a straitjacket; Rabo receives them in the foyer, among pictures of little girls on swings. Once freed, Paul is calm and asks to be put to bed in a particular upstairs room, with Adolph Gottlieb’s Frozen Sounds Number Seven above the fireplace and a bay window overlooking the dunes and ocean.

Rabo interprets Paul’s precise choice of room as evidence that he has imagined moving in for a long time, perhaps seeing Rabo’s home as a dependable refuge. The episode reverses their earlier arrangement: Paul had refused to leave his own house because he could write only at home, yet in crisis he asks to sleep under Rabo’s roof. Rabo’s description of himself as Paul’s insurance plan captures the care beneath his teasing, though the narration does not establish that Paul formally moves in.

Grand Missions and Ending

During the episode, Paul says that he has been put on Earth for two missions: to secure the recognition he believes the Polly Madison books deserve and to publish his Theory of Revolution. The scale of these aims contrasts with the practical precariousness Rabo has described: Paul has little money, depends on his friend for meals, and has just required emergency assistance. His declarations are presented in the context of a disturbed state, not as a settled program whose fulfillment is reported.

Paul eventually commits himself voluntarily to the psychiatric ward at the Veterans Administration hospital in Riverhead. Rabo says he did not know how to help with the substances Paul’s body was producing and that Paul was becoming frightening even to himself; Circe is glad to see him leave the house. Rabo frames hospital care as being looked after by the government, a wry acknowledgment of the limits of friendship. Paul’s trajectory ends not with a resolution of his writing ambitions or his dependence on Rabo, but with his transfer into professional care. The novel’s account preserves the affectionate absurdity of their bond while making clear that companionship alone cannot manage the crisis.