Meiselman orders a bowl of chicken noodle soup, a turkey-bacon club sandwich, and a Coke. I have just the soup, hoping to make a fairly quick escape from this lunch. 

When I ask if he is married, Meiselman tells me that he isn't, though he had come close once. "It's a long story," he says. I ask him where he works (in connection with his manuscript the old line, "Don't give up your day job" comes to mind), and he says that he doesn't have to. His mother died when he was seventeen, and father, with whom he continued to live, died nine years ago, and left him, an only child, with enough money to be able to devote the rest of his life to study. 

"My father was a hustler," Meiselman says. "He came out of World War Two and drove a cab. He bought a second cab. He went from there to acquire a hot dog joint on the old West Side, near the Sears mail-order centre. Then he bought a second hot dog stand on Western Avenue, a joint called Beefy 19, you may remember it, near Foster. He never ran any of these places himself. He always had partners doing the actual work. He finally sold everything and acquired an appliance parts business, which allowed him a minor monopoly on appliance parts for the whole northern and northwestern suburban sections of Chicago."

"Impressive," I say. "My own father was an accountant. Unlike yours, he was a cautious type."

"My old man," Meiselman continues, "once said to me that he thought that if he were away from his business for six months his employees could only cheat him out of eight per cent of the profits. A funny thing to tell me, when you think about it, since I was one of his employees."

Meiselman slurps up the last of his soup, and starts on his club sandwich. He pours lots of ketchup on his fries. 

"I believe my father was dyslexic," Meiselman says. "I never saw him read anything. Whenever I'd give him anything to read, he'd say, ‘You read it to me'."

"How come you didn't take over his business?" I ask.

"Because I wasn't any good at it. My father thought about business, money, the angles, full-time. My mind was always elsewhere." 

"Where did you go to school?" 

"Illinois here in Chicago," he says. "I was a lousy student. I daydreamed. I wasn't a conventional person, and couldn't be expected to learn in the regular way, though I didn't know it at the time. A lot of geniuses didn't do well in school. You probably know that."