Aren’t we all composites?

Composites assembled from people we have loved and loathed, places we have lived in and fled, books we have read, films we have watched, stupid impulses and valorous decisions, private obsessions, borrowed opinions, petty triumphs, spectacular victories and failures, inherited and ideological allegiances, accidental fortunes and earned misfortunes, and an alarming amount of schmaltz that survived school, college and supposedly corrective experiences.

Archer was one of my earliest tutors in the less flattering mechanics of being human like that. So he certainly occupies a few pieces of my life’s portrait.

And I shall always be grateful.