Summary

Chapter 1 - As this chapter begins, there is a series of drawings: of a seagull, of a small plane pulling an un-marked banner, of a small lighthouse, of a short pier with a boathouse at the end. In first person narration, Rich describes the first day of his fifth year teaching a week-long class in cartooning at a summer art conference. He describes the conference’s history (as a space-filling replacement for college classes at an abandoned small town campus); several of his fellow artist/teachers (some with long-term careers, others whose success is more recent); and some of the students in his class. He describes reading his “course description from who knows when,” and feeling his breathing becoming “labored” (5). The text reproduces the first page of the course description, including the suggestion that the work the students are going to be doing is...