FOREWORD xi 



it out of the freezer, down under the apple 

 tree, in the mid-morning or mid-afternoon. 

 Afterward, when it appears in sober decorum, 

 surrounded by all the appurtenances of civ 

 ilization, it is a very commonplace affair; out 

 under the apple tree it is ambrosia. 



Why not go further? Why not take all our 

 desserts in life when they taste best, instead 

 of at the proper time, when we don t care for 

 them? Desserts are, I suppose, meant to be 

 enjoyed. Why not have them when most 

 enjoyable? I wonder if there is not a certain 

 perverted conscientiousness that leads us to 

 this enforcement of our pleasures. I am my 

 self conscious that I can scarcely ever ap 

 proach a pleasure with a mind singly bent on 

 enjoyment. I regard it with something like 

 suspicion, I hedge, I hesitate, I defer. What 

 is the motive force here? Is it an inherited 

 asceticism, bidding us beware of pleasure as 

 such? Is it pride, which will not permit us to 

 make unseemly haste toward our desires? Is 

 it a subtle self-gratification, which seeks to 

 add zest, tone, to our delights by postponing 

 them? Is it fear of anticlimax, which makes 

 us save our pleasure for the last thing, that 



