Aiken, Agee, and Sandburg: A Memoir
Bernard C. Schoenfeld
After all, it had been so long ago, and because I was aware of my own mutability and creative rust, I had not dared face the memories of my friends, three of the finest American writers in the first half of this century.
Then early one evening last winter I visited the Fragua, a favorite watering-hole in San Miguel, where I have lived for five years. This Mexican colonial town is reputed to be a cultural center for young gringo would-be sculptors and weavers, painters and writers, a thinned-out version of what, in my youth, Provincetown, Westport, McDowell, and, of course, Paris, had truly been. There is here a fine arts institute and a center for writers. Each is housed in a 17th-century colonial mansion. Twice a year, a few hundred students in their early and mid-twenties fly, bus, or drive down to attend English-conducted classes and at dusk sit in the quiet Cathedral-dominated plaza, with notebooks and virginal canvases. Between six and eight, they take advantage of the happy hour at the Fragua to buy two drinks for the price of one and allow themselves to mingle with gringo elders like myself.
This particular night, the dimly lighted sala was packed with well-heeled Mexicans except for a group of young Americans sitting around a long, oblong table. Anne, a 20-year-old enrolled in a poetry class, whom I had met sometime before on a plaza bench, called out to me to join them. She introduced me, then explained that the girl beside her was also a budding poet but that the five young men were studying the art of fiction. As I shook hands, I guessed the
