King

When I was in graduate school (of sorts) at UCLA, one afternoon I started to walk down a sloping lawn on campus and saw a group of about 100 students surrounding a short stocky man dressed in a black suit. I recognized him, of course. It was MLK. I walked on over and stood there in the warm sun as he talked about why we should treat one another decently. His style, Southern and mannered and sonorous, was somewhat foreign to me. My idea of good prose was THE MALTESE FALCON or THE STRANGER. But I did not feel right about being critical, because King was the American I most respected. That is still the case.