{"product_id":"foreign-affairs-isbn-9780812976311","title":"Foreign Affairs","description":"WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVirginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children’s folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlso in London is Vinnie’s colleague Fred Turner, a handsome, flat broke, newly separated, and thoroughly miserable young man trying to focus on his own research. Instead, he is distracted by a beautiful and unpredictable English actress and the world she belongs to. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBoth American, both abroad, and both achingly lonely, Vinnie and Fred play out their confused alienation and dizzying romantic liaisons in Alison Lurie’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Smartly written, poignant, and witty, \u003ci\u003eForeign Affairs\u003c\/i\u003e remains an enduring comic masterpiece. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A splendid comedy, very bright, brilliantly written in a confident and original manner. The best book by one of our finest writers.”\u003cbr\u003e –Elizabeth Hardwick\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There is no American writer I have read with more constant pleasure and sympathy. . . . \u003ci\u003eForeign Affairs\u003c\/i\u003e earns the same shelf as Henry James and Edith Wharton.”\u003cbr\u003e–John Fowles\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If you manage to read only a few good novels a year, make this one of them.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An ingenious, touching book.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eNewsweek\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A flawless jewel.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003ePhiladelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlison Lurie\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of many highly praised novels, including\u003ci\u003e The War Between the Tates, The Truth About Lorin Jones\u003c\/i\u003e (Prix Femina Etranger), and \u003ci\u003eForeign Affairs\u003c\/i\u003e (Pulitzer Prize for fiction). She teaches writing, folklore, and literature at Cornell University.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As I walked by myself\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And talked to myself,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Myself said unto me,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Look to thyself,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Take care of thyself,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    For nobody cares for thee.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Old Song\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    On a cold blowy February day a woman is boarding the ten a.m. flight to  London, followed by an invisible dog. The woman’s name is Virginia Miner:  she is fifty-four years old, small, plain, and unmarried—the sort of  person that no one ever notices, though she is an Ivy League college  professor who has published several books and has a well-established  reputation in the expanding field of children’s literature.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The dog that is trailing Vinnie, visible only to her imagination, is her  familiar demon or demon familiar, known to her privately as Fido and  representing self-pity. She visualizes him as a medium-sized dirty-white  long-haired mutt, mainly Welsh terrier: sometimes trailing her silently,  at other times whining and panting and nipping at her heels; when bolder,  dashing round in circles trying to trip her up, or at least get her to  stoop down so that he may rush at her, knock her to the ground, and cover  her with sloppy kisses. Vinnie knows very well that Fido wants to get onto  the plane with her, but she hopes to leave him behind, as she has  successfully done on other trips abroad. Recent events, however, and the  projected length of her stay, make this unlikely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Vinnie is leaving today for six months in England on a foundation grant.  There, under her professional name of V. A. Miner, she will continue her  study of the folk-rhymes of schoolchildren. She has made this journey a  number of times, and through a process of trial and error reduced its  expense and discomfort to a minimum. She always chooses a daytime charter  flight, preferring those on which no films are shown. If she could afford  it, she would pay the regular fare so as to avoid boarding delays (she has  already stood in various lines for nearly an hour); but that would be  foolishly extravagant. Her grant is small, and she will have to watch  expenses carefully as it is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Though patience is held to be a virtue most appropriate to women,  especially aging women, Vinnie has always particularly disliked waiting  for anything, and never does so if it can be avoided. Now, for instance,  she elbows her way deftly past less experienced passengers who are  searching for their seat numbers or are encumbered with excess luggage or  with children, excusing herself in a thin pleasant voice. By crossing  through the galley to the far aisle and back again between two rows of  seats, she outflanks a massed confusion of obvious rubes with carry-on  bags labeled sun tours. In less time than it takes to read this paragraph  she has made her way to a window seat near an exit in the nonsmoking  section, pausing only to extract the London Times and British Vogue from a  magazine rack. (Once the plane is airborne, the stewardess will distribute  periodicals to all   the passengers, but those Vinnie prefers may vanish before they reach her.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Following her usual procedure, Vinnie slides into her place and unzips her  boots. In stocking feet she climbs onto the seat and opens the overhead  locker; since she is barely over five feet tall, this is the only way she  can reach it. She removes two pillows and a loose-woven blue blanket,  which she drops onto the center seat beside her handbag and her British  periodicals, thus tacitly claiming this space if—as is likely in midweek  and mid-February—it hasn’t been assigned to anyone. Then she arranges her  worn wool-lined raincoat, her floppy beige felt hat, and her  amber-and-beige Liberty-print wool shawl in the locker, in such a way that  only the rudest of fellow passengers will attempt to encroach upon them.  She slams the locker shut with some difficulty, and sits down. She stows  her boots under her own seat along with a carton of duty-free Bristol  Cream sherry, and puts on a pair of folding slippers. She arranges one  pillow beside her head and wedges the other between her hip and the arm of  the chair. Finally she smooths her crisply cut graying hair, leans back,  and with a sigh fastens the seatbelt across her tan wool sweater and skirt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A disinterested observer, Vinnie is quite aware, might well consider these  maneuvers and condemn her as self-concerned and grasping. In this culture,  where energy and egotism are rewarded in the young and good-looking, plain  aging women are supposed to be self-effacing, uncomplaining—to take up as  little space and breathe as little air as possible. All very well, she  thinks, if you travel with someone dear to you or at least familiar:  someone who will help you stow away your coat, tuck a pillow behind your  head, find you a newspaper—or if you choose, converse with you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But what of those who travel alone? Why should Vinnie Miner, whose comfort  has been disregarded by others for most of her adult life, disregard her  own comfort? Why should she allow her coat, hat, and belongings to be  crushed by the coats and hats and belongings of younger, larger, handsomer  persons? Why should she sit alone for seven or eight hours, pillowless and  chilled, reading an outdated copy of Punch, with her feet swollen and her  pale amber eyes watering from the smoke of the cigarette fiends in the  adjoining seats? As she often says to herself—though never aloud, for she  knows how unpleasant it would sound—why shouldn’t she look out for  herself? Nobody else will.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But such internal arguments, frequent as they are with Vinnie, occupy  little of her mind now. The uneven, uncharacteristically loud sigh she  gave as she sank back against the scratchy blue plush was not a sigh of  contentment, or even one of relief: it was an exhalation of wretchedness.  Her travel routine has been performed by rote; if she were alone, she  would break into wails of misery and vexation, and stain the London Times  with her tears.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Twenty minutes ago, while waiting in the departure lounge in a cheerful  mood, Vinnie read in a magazine of national circulation a scornful and  disparaging reference to her life’s work. Projects such as hers, the  article stated, are a prime example of the waste of public funds, the  proliferation of petty and useless scholarship, and the general weakness  and folly of the humanities in America today. Do we really need a  scholarly study of playground doggerel? inquired the writer, one L. D.  Zimmern, a professor of English at Columbia. No doubt Mr. or Ms. Miner  would answer this query by assuring us of the social, historical, or  literary value of “Ring-around-a-rosy,” he continued, sawing through the  supports of any possible answer; but he, for one, was not convinced.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    What makes this unprovoked attack especially hideous is that for over  thirty years the Atlantic has been Vinnie’s favorite magazine. Though she  was raised in the suburbs of New York and teaches at an upstate  university, her imaginative loyalties are to New England. She has often  thought that American culture took a long downward step when its hegemony  passed from Boston to New York in the late nineteenth century; and it has  been a comfort to her that the Atlantic continues to be edited from Back  Bay. When she pictures her work receiving general public recognition, it  is to this magazine that she awards the honor of discovery. She has  fantasized the process often: the initial letter of inquiry, the  respectfully eager manner of the interviewer, the title of the finished  essay; the moment when her colleagues at Corinth University and elsewhere  will open the magazine and see her name printed on its glossy pages in its  characteristic and elegant typeface. (Vinnie’s ambition, though steady and  ardent, is comparatively modest: it hasn’t occurred to her that her name  might be printed upon the cover of the Atlantic.) She has imagined all  that will follow: the sudden delighted smiles of her friends; the  graceless grins of those who are not her friends and have undervalued both  her and her subject. The latter group, alas, will be much more numerous.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    For the truth is that children’s literature is a poor relation in her   department—indeed, in most English departments: a stepdaughter grudgingly  tolerated because, as in the old tales, her words are glittering jewels of  a sort that attract large if not equally brilliant masses   of undergraduates. Within the departmental family she sits in the  chimney-corner, while her idle, ugly siblings dine at the chairman’s  table—though, to judge by enrollment figures, many of them must spout  toads and lizards.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Well, Vinnie thinks bitterly, now she has got her wish; her work has been  mentioned in the Atlantic. Just her luck—because surely there were others  whose project titles might have attracted the spiteful attention of L. D.  Zimmern. But of course it was she he chose, what else could she expect?  Vinnie realizes that Fido has followed her onto the plane and is snuffling  at her legs, but she lacks the energy to push him away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Above her seat the warning light has been turned on; the engines begin to  vibrate as if with her own internal tremor. Vinnie stares through the  streaked, distorting oblong of glass at gray tarmac, pitted heaps of dirty  congealed snow, other planes taxiing toward takeoff; but what she sees is  a crowd of Atlantic magazines queuing for departure or already en route,  singly or in squadrons, flying over the United States in the hands and  briefcases of travelers, hitching their way in automobiles, loaded onto  trucks and trains, bundled and tied for sale on newsstands. She visualizes  what must come or has already come of this mass migration: she sees, all  over the country—in homes and offices, in libraries and dentists’ waiting  rooms—her colleagues, ex-colleagues, students, ex-students, neighbors,  ex-neighbors, friends, and ex-friends (not to mention the members of the  Foundation Grants Committee). All of them, at this moment or some other  moment, are opening the Atlantic, turning its glossy white pages, coming  upon that awful paragraph. She imagines which ones will laugh aloud; which  will read the sentences out with a sneering smile; which will gasp with  sympathy; and which will groan, thinking or saying how bad it looks for  the Department or for the Foundation. “Hard on Vinnie,” one will remark.  “But you have to admit there’s something a little comic about the title of  her proposal: ‘A comparative investigation of the play-rhymes of British  and American Children’—well now, really.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    About its title, perhaps; not about its content, as she has spent years  proving. Trivial as it may seem, her material is rich in meaning. For  example—Vinnie, almost involuntarily, begins composing in her head a  letter to the editor of the Atlantic—consider the verse to which Professor  Zimmern took such particular exception:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ring around a rosy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Pocketful of posies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ashes, ashes,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    We all fall down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    —This rhyme appears from internal as well as external evidence to date  very possibly from the Great Plague of 1665. If so, the “posies” may be  the nosegays of flowers and herbs carried by citizens of London to ward  off infection, while “Ashes, ashes,” perhaps refers to the burning of dead  bodies that littered the streets.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    —If Professor Zimmern had troubled to do his research . . . if he had  merely taken the time to inquire of any authority in the field—Vinnie  continues her imaginary letter—he . . . he would be alive today. Unbidden,  these words appear in her mind to complete the sentence. She sees L. D.  Zimmern, whom she has never met but imagines (inaccurately) to be fat and  bald, as a plague-swollen, discolored corpse. He is lying on the  cobblestones of a seventeenth-  century London alley, his clothes foully stained with vomit, his face  blackened and contorted, his limbs hideously askew in the death agony, his  faded posy of herbs wilting beside him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    —Many more of these apparently “meaningless” verses, she resumes, a little  shocked by her own imagination, have similar hidden historical and social  referents, and preserve in oral form . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    While the stewardess, in a strained BBC accent, begins her rote  exhortation, Vinnie continues her letter to the editor. Phrases she has  used many times in lectures and articles repeat themselves within her  head, interspersed with those coming over the loudspeakers. “Children’s  game-rhymes\/Place the life vest over your head\/oldest universal  literature\/Bring the straps to the front and fasten them securely\/  representing for millions of people their earliest and often their only  exposure to\/Pulling on the cord will cause the vest to become inflated  with air.” Inflated with air, indeed. As she knows from bitter experience,  nothing is ever gained by sending such letters. Either they are blandly  refused (“We regret that our limited space prevents . . .”) or, worse,  they are accepted and printed weeks or months later, reminding everyone of  your discomfiture long after they had forgotten about it, and making you  seem a sore loser.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Not only mustn’t she write to the Atlantic: she must take care never to  mention its attack on her to anyone, friend or foe. In academic life it is  considered weak and undignified to complain of your reviews. Indeed, in  Vinnie’s experience, the only afflictions it is really safe to mention are  those shared by all your colleagues: the weather, inflation, delinquent  students, and so forth. Bad publicity must be dealt with as Vinnie was  once taught by her mother to deal with flaws in her adolescent appearance:  in total silence. “If you have a spot on your face or your dress, Vinnie,  for goodness’ sake don’t mention it. At best you’ll be reminding people of  something unpleasant about yourself; at worst you’ll call it to the  attention of those who might never have noticed.” Yes; no doubt a very  sensible policy. Its only disadvantage is that Vinnie will never know who  has noticed this new ugly spot and who hasn’t. Never, never know. Fido,  who has been standing with his forepaws on her knees, whining hopefully,  now scrambles into her lap.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The rackety roar of the engines increases; the plane begins to trundle  down the runway, gathering speed. At what seems the last possible moment  it lurches unevenly upward, causing the usual shudder in Vinnie’s bowels  and the sensation of having been struck on the back of the neck with the  seat-cushion. She swallows with difficulty and glances toward the window,  where a frozen gray section of Long Island suburb is wheeling by at an  unnatural angle. She feels queasy, disoriented, damaged. And no wonder,  whines Fido: this public sneer will be in her life forever, part of her  shabby history of losses and failures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Vinnie knows, of course, that she ought not to take it so hard. But she  knows too that those who have no significant identity outside their  careers—no spouse, no lover, no parents, no children—do take such things  hard. In the brief distant time when she was married, professional  reverses did not damage the core of her life; they could not disrupt the  comfort (or, later, the discomfort) of what went on at home. They were, so  to speak, outside the plane, muffled by social insulation and the hum of  the marital engines. Now these blows fall on her directly, as if the heavy  oblong of glass had been removed so that Vinnie could be slapped full in  the face with the Atlantic—not the magazine, but a cold half-congealed  sopping-wet arm of the ocean after which it is named, over which they are  passing; slapped again and again and—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Excuse me.” It is a real voice that Vinnie now hears, the voice of the  passenger in the aisle seat: a bulky, balding man in a tan Western-cut  suit and rawhide tie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Yes?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I just said, mind if I take a look at your newspaper?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Though Vinnie does mind, she is constrained by convention from saying so.  “Not at all.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Thanks.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She acknowledges the man’s grin with the faintest possible nod; then, to  protect herself from his conversation and her own thoughts, picks up  Vogue. Listlessly she turns its shiny pages, stopping at an article on  winter soups and again at one on indoor gardening. The references to  marrowbones, parsnips, and partridges, to Christmas roses and ivy, the  erudite yet cosily confiding style—so different from the hysterical  exhortation of American fashion magazines—make her smile as if recognizing  an old friend. The pieces on clothes and beauty, on the other hand, she  passes over rapidly. She has now no use for, and has never derived any  benefit from, their advice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    For nearly forty years Vinnie has suffered from the peculiar disadvantages  of the woman born without physical charms. Even as a child she had a  nondescript sort of face, which gave the impression of a small wild  rodent: the nose sharp and narrow, the eyes round and rather too  close-set, the mouth a nibbling slit. For the first eleven years of her  life, however, her looks gave no one any concern. But as she approached  puberty, first her suddenly anxious mother and then Vinnie herself  attempted to improve upon her naturally meager endowments. Faithfully,  they followed the changing recommendations of acquaintances and of the  media, but never with any success. The ringlets and ruffles popular in  Vinnie’s late childhood did not become her; the austerely cut,  square-shouldered clothes of World War II   emphasized her adolescent scrawniness; the New Look drowned her in excess  yardage, and so on through every subsequent change of fashion. Indeed, it  would be kinder to draw a veil over some of Vinnie’s later attempts at  stylishness: her bony forty-year-old legs in an orange leather miniskirt;  her narrow mouse’s face peering from behind teased hair and an oversized  pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When she reached fifty, however, Vinnie began to abandon these strenuous  efforts. She ceased tinting her hair a juvenile and unnatural shade of  auburn and let it grow out its natural piebald gray-beige; she gave away  half her clothes and threw out most of her makeup. She might as well face  facts, she told herself: she was a disadvantaged woman, doubly  disadvantaged now by age; someone men would not charge at with bullish  enthusiasm no matter how many brightly colored objects she waved to  attract their attention. Well, at least she could avoid being a figure of  fun. If she couldn’t look like an attractive woman, she could at least  look like a lady.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But just as she was resigning herself to total defeat, the odds began to  alter in Vinnie’s favor. Within the last couple of years she has in a  sense caught up with, even passed, some of her better-equipped  contemporaries. The comparison of her appearance to that of other women of  her age is no longer a constant source of mortification. She is no better  looking than she ever was, but they have lost more ground. Her slim,  modestly proportioned figure has not been made bulgy and flabby by  childbearing or by overeating and overdieting; her small but rather nice  breasts (creamy, pink-tipped) have not fallen. Her features have not taken  on the injured, strained expression of the former beauty, nor does she  paint and decorate or simper and coo in a desperate attempt to arouse the  male interest she feels to be her due. She is not consumed with rage and  grief at the cessation of attentions that were in any case moderate,  undependable, and intermittent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As a result men—even men she has been intimate with—do not now gaze upon  her with dismay, as upon a beloved landscape devastated by fire, flood, or  urban development. They do not mind that Vinnie Miner, who was never much  to look at, now looks old. After all, they hadn’t slept with her out of  romantic passion, but out of comradeship and temporary mutual need—often  almost absent-mindedly, to relieve the pressure of their desire for some  more glamorous female. It wasn’t uncommon for a man who had just made love  to Vinnie to sit up naked in bed, light a cigarette, and relate to her the  vicissitudes of his current romance with some temperamental  beauty—breaking off occasionally to say how great it was to have a pal  like her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Some may be surprised to learn that there is this side to Professor  Miner’s life. But it is a mistake to believe that plain women are more or  less celibate. The error is common, since in the popular mind—and  especially in the media—the idea of sex is linked with the idea of beauty.  Partly as a result, men are not eager to boast of their liaisons with  unattractive women, or to display such liaisons in public. As for the  women, painful experience and a natural sense of self-preservation often  keep them from publicizing these relationships, in which they seldom have  the status of a declared lover, though often that of a good friend.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As has sometimes been remarked, almost any woman can find a man to sleep  with if she sets her standards low enough. But what must be lowered are  not necessarily standards of character, intelligence, sexual energy, good  looks, and worldly achievement. Rather, far more often, she must relax her  requirements for commitment, constancy, and romantic passion; she must  cease to hope for declarations of love, admiring stares, witty telegrams,  eloquent letters, birthday cards, valentines, candy, and flowers. No;  plain women often have a sex life. What they lack, rather, is a love life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Vinnie has now reached an article in Vogue devoted to new ideas for  children’s birthday parties, which arouses her professional dismay because  of its emphasis on adult-directed commercial entertainment: the hiring of  professional magicians and clowns, the organization of sightseeing trips,  etc.—just the sort of thing that is tending more and more to replace the  traditional rituals and games. Partly as a result of such articles, the  ancient and precious folk culture of childhood is rapidly being destroyed.  Meanwhile, those who hope to record and preserve this vanishing heritage  are sneered at, denigrated, slandered in popular magazines. Woof, woof.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Here’s your paper.” Vinnie’s seatmate holds out the London Times,  clumsily refolded.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Oh. Thank you.” To avoid further requests for it from other passengers,  she places the newspaper in her lap beneath Vogue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Thank you. Not much in it.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Since this is not phrased as a question, Vinnie is not obliged to respond,  and does not. Not much of what? she wonders. Perhaps of American news,  sports events, middlebrow comment, or even advertisements, in comparison  to whatever paper he habitually reads. Or perhaps, being used to screaming  headlines and exclamatory one-sentence paragraphs, he has been misled by  the typographical and stylistic restraint of the Times into thinking that  nothing of importance occurred in the world yesterday. And perhaps nothing  has, though to her, to V. A. Miner, arf, arf, awooo! Stop that, Fido.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Setting aside Vogue, she unfolds the newspaper. Gradually, the leisurely  Times style, with its air of measured consideration and its undertone of  educated irony, begins to calm her, as the voice of an English nanny might  quiet a hurt, overwrought child.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “You on your way to London?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “What? Yes.” Caught as it were in the act, she admits her destination, and  returns her glance to the story Nanny is telling her about Prince Charles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Glad to get out of that New York weather, I bet.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Again Vinnie agrees, but in such a way as to make it clear that she does  not choose to converse. She shifts her body and the tissuey sheets of the  paper toward the window, though nothing can be seen there. The plane seems  to stand still, shuddering with a monotonous regularity, while ragged gray  billows of cloud churn past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    However long the flight, Vinnie always tries to avoid striking up   acquaintance with anyone, especially on transatlantic journeys. According  to her calculations, there is far more chance of having to listen to some  bore for seven-and-a-half hours than of meeting someone interesting—and  after all, whom even among her friends would she want to converse with for  so long?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Besides, this man looks like someone Vinnie would hardly want to converse  with for seven-and-a-half minutes. His dress and speech proclaim him to  be, probably, a Southern Plains States businessman of no particular  education or distinction; the sort of person who goes on package tours to  Europe. And indeed the carry-on bag that rests between his oversize  Western-style leather boots is pasted with the same sun tours logo she had  noticed earlier: fat comic-book letters enclosing a grinning Disney sun.  Physically too he is of a type she has never cared for: big, ruddy,  blunt-featured, with cropped coarse graying red hair. Some women would  consider him attractive in a weather-beaten Western way; but Vinnie has  always preferred in men an elegant slimness, fair fine hair and skin,  small well-cut features—the sort of looks that are an idealized male  version of her own.Winner of the Pulitzer Prize","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300737929445,"sku":"NP9780812976311","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812976311.jpg?v=1767727563","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/foreign-affairs-isbn-9780812976311","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}