He has always understood me to be a kind of Bartleby of politics, W. says. 'I would prefer not to': that's what my indifference to social questions says, W. says. Or, better: 'fuck off, I'm eating'.

Of course, he would prefer not to hang out with me, W. says. But he thinks that it is perhaps by spending time with someone who associates with no one (except him), and who has no real friends (except for him), that he might understand what politics might mean. That perhaps it is only by passing the day with someone who had failed to grasp even the most rudimentary of social rules, that he might discern the essence of politics.