Not the young black novelist, and not several hundred other Americans, living or dead, three or four of whom might have possessed the middle name of Garfield. Was it Garfield? There's no way to ask; George has been dead for more than 20 years.

George Davis, then associate and fiction editor of Mademoiselle, was the tonic antidote to a Radcliffe degree in the history and literature of the 19th century. George, who had not finished high school, taught the necessity of style to several hundred writers, photographers, artists, editors, and the yearly crop of Mademoiselle's college guest editors. He dusted the parochialism off brand-new New Yorkers from Roanoke, Chicago, Key West, Texas, Georgia, Minnesota, even Westchester, Roslyn, and Riverdale.

By June 1, 1945, when I and 13 other guest editors arrived for our month at the magazine, George was already somewhat mythological. Unlike those of us who had "taken" it, he spoke beautiful French. Even more exotic, he had once been engaged to Gypsy Rose Lee. George lived in Brooklyn Heights on Middagh Street and in his house lived (or so we heard) Carson McCullers, William Steig, Wilhelm Reich (or Steig in a Reichian orgone box?), Auden—W. H. Auden!—actress Paula Lawrence, everybody....