Now that you’ve gotten your hot little hands on a copy of Nella Larsen’s Passing (You did, didn’t you? If you didn’t, you are excused from class with my blessing), it is time for us to go on and on about it until someone turns the lights off and lets us know that they’re closing in five minutes.

Item the first: “It was the last letter in Irene Redfield’s little pile of morning mail” is perhaps one of the loveliest and cunning-est ways to start a novel. It’s the kind of sentence that makes you settle happily into your chair and allow yourself a small smile. It tells you that the author is the kind of woman you can trust. It’s ridiculous and infuriating that she couldn’t find a publisher for her third book, particularly when one thinks of how many Rabbit Run novels John Updike has thrust upon a reluctant and unwilling public. I know, of course, that it’s an exercise in frustration to ask questions like what else could she have accomplished if only there hadn’t been so many impediments to her writing career, but I still wonder.

Item the second: Clare. “[There was] nothing sacrificial in Clare Kendry’s idea of life, no allegiance beyond her own immediate desire.” Oh, God, Clare. How many feelings did Clare make you feel? SO MANY. If nothing else, I thought her beautiful, unbearable selfishness went a long way to subvert the “tragic mulatto” archetype — she suffered, but she didn’t exist to suffer, and she made others suffer too, and she wanted things, and she made sure that she got what she wanted. She’s very powerful and easy to love and hard to know. She smiles provocatively at waiters. She is Trouble.

“The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.” Are you thinking of your Clare right now with a mixture of relief that she’s no longer a part of your life and a strange and sudden desire to see how she’s doing?

(Last Clare quote. For now.) “‘Of course,’ she declared, ‘that’s what everybody wants, just a little more money, even the people who have it. And I must say I don’t blame them. Money’s awfully nice to have. In fact, all things considered, I think, ‘Rene, that it’s even worth the price.”

Item the third: Just how gay is this book? Sort of gay, or very gay? The letter Clare sends Irene in the beginning is — I mean, that’s a “let’s make up, lover” letter, right? It’s perfumed and it talks about wild and painful desires and how everything is sort of Irene’s fault for looking so good in Chicago. And the scene in the restaurant in Chicago! Where they keep sneaking glances at each other and then blushing and then looking away and then not being able to look away for another second!

Item the fourth: Was Brian sleeping with Clare? Oh God, that scene where Irene is putting on cold cream and realizes he’s invited Clare over without asking her slayed me. I will be the first to confess that I do not understand Brian at all. “If I could only be sure that at bottom it’s just Brazil.”

Item the fifth: “Everything can’t be explained by some general biological phrase.” Did Nella Larsen anticipate and ridicule the wave of pop-evolutionary psychology that was to come? Was she a witch?

Item the sixth: “Absurd! Impossible! White people were so stupid about such things for all that they usually asserted that they were able to tell; and by the most ridiculous means, finger-nails, palms of hands, shapes of ears, teeth, and other equally silly rot. They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, or a gipsy. Never, when she was alone, had they even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro.” It’s just a great line.

Item the seventh: The end, guys. The end. “Gone! The soft white face, the bright hair, the disturbing scarlet mouth, the dreaming eyes, the caressing smile, the whole torturing loveliness that had been Clare Kendry. That beauty that had torn at Irene’s placid life. Gone! The mocking daring, the gallantry of her nose, the ringing bells of her laughter.”

She pushed her. Right? She absolutely pushed her. The only question is how much she pushed her to keep her away from Brian, and how much she pushed her to keep her away from herself.