But whether you were innocent or guilty, you were looked after by the others in prison.
If you had problems with the state, you were looked on with a certain suspicion, but that very fact gave you greater prestige in certain circles.
"I remember coming here the first time in 1996, and if you were talking about environmental issues you were looked upon as a radical, almost a communist.
"The men would say, 'Why should I work so that you can drive around in that?' " In the Oldsmobile, "you were looked at differently," he said, adding, "It said that you weren't cheap," but it did not scream money.
There was sex where you were looked in the eye and beautiful things were said to you and then there was what Ira used to think of as yoo-hoo sex: where the other person seemed spirited away, not quite there, their pleasure mysterious and crazy and only accidentally involving you.
My own sense of misery in trying to make sense of oneself in a city where you were looked at according to certain stereotypes and parameters could structure the beginning of the book, in terms of both Telemachus's alienation and also Joyce's Stephen's alienation.
