By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The narrator associates a man with an artist in Malraux's Man's Fate and asks what he would do without a wife. A note says Penny should leave him, while the man says he would stay and begin again with what remained.
The conditional question and the revised Penny line change the earlier reading about laughter. Missing words in the crowded lower passage leave the man's plans incomplete. The source names a literary work but does not establish a biographical parallel.
A cursive page headed 'STEwED': a man who 'reminded me / of the artist / in Malraux / Man's fate', asked what he would do if 'Penny Should / leave him', said he 'would stay on, / the land', and 'no matter / what was left / him would / begin again.'
A portrait of stubborn attachment to the land; one word after still is omitted as unstable, and the people are named as the page names them.