CASUAL

...The extreme form my vanity takes is, above all, not to wish to appear vain...

...At some point, Oldsmobile jumped its prices up roughly five grand, and I said to myself that for another few thousand dollars I could get a small BMW...

...It isn't the last word about the person, but it isn't, I believe, a bad first or second word...

...The kind of car a person drives tells you a fair amount about that person's wealth, aesthetic inclinations, his interest in status, and his actual status...

...People stare at it...

...Two BMWs later, ready to buy a fourth, I saw this new Jaguar S-Type (the English not only pronounce but put heavy emphasis on that U in Jaguar), whose grill reminded me of the lovely, old bright red Jag that the actor John Thaw drives in the English television show Inspector Morse...

...In the short stories I have written, whenever I have characters in cars, I always specify what make of car it is that they are driving, designating not only the make (Buick, Chrysler, BMW), but the series within the make (Park Avenue, New Yorker, 328i...

...I recall being with Saul Bellow in the garage of his rather expensive building in Hyde Park, the neighborhood of the University of Chicago, where I noted a large number of dismal cars: dreary Dodges, tired Buicks, Volvos that had seen better days...

...I became a leather-seat man...

...To incur our envy, possibly hatred...

...I have taken the cure...

...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...

...No, he is telling it because, sad to report, he is ever so slightly edgy about owning so elegant a machine...

...When I could afford to buy new cars, I deliberately chose dull ones: first Chevys, then Oldsmobiles, middle of the line both...

...With a car like this," my mother said, "no one gives you a break...

...Sit Down...

...Driving with her once at O'Hare Airport, we were caught in heavy traffic, and I suggested that she put her arm out, in the hope that another driver would give her a break and let her into the moving line of traffic...

...I accelerated, leaving him at the light, astew in his combined envy and contempt...

...On second thought, as W. C. Fields is alleged to have said on his deathbed, screw 'em...

...I was not reared but later educated to take a dim view of such small but obvious delights as a swell car gives...

...Why, it seems fair for you to ask, is this man telling us this...

...Casual CONFESSIONS OF A CRAVEN MATERIALIST I don't expect ever to write anything that will gain me less sympathy than this, so I might as well get right to it: I bought a new car this week, rather a grand car, I'm afraid...

...The day I bought this car I thought perhaps I ought to keep it covered in our building's garage during the day, taking it out only late at night, driving it wearing sunglasses and a slouch hat through sleeping suburban neighborhoods...

...Ah," said Bellow, "Academic motors," his point being that it was of course considered unseemly for academics to drive expensive cars...

...And then, after four years or so, I stepped things up to the next size BMW...

...The car's color is sapphire blue and its interior is ivory white with something called Connolly leather...

...Until the past decade or so, my own program with cars was that of a strict reverse snobbery...

...My worry is that the sheer elegance of the machine will draw attention to me, its owner, who may not be up to a comparison with his car...

...Her last car was a maroon Cadillac Seville, with a boxy back, produced in the middle 1980s, very swank...

...In the less than full week I have thus far owned it, people have stopped me on the street to ask how it drives...

...Shut up...

...Hold On...

...Her own taste ran to fancy cars, the fancier the better...

...If one were an intel-lectual—yo, me again—one was supposed to be above such things...

...A number of pedestrians have pointed at the car as I have driven past...

...I also eschewed the computer-screen navigational system, though I did order a CD player, and they seem to have thrown in heated seats without my asking for them...

...A crass materialist is one thing, a craven materialist—yo, friends, that's me—quite another...

...It drives the way a butterfly floats—effort-lessly, lyrically...

...It's a Jaguar, something called the S-Type sedan, with the smaller of the two engines offered, and I would like everyone to know that I chose not to have the telephone that comes with a system that allows one to turn on the radio, adjust the temperature, and do other things in the car by voice...

...My new motto comes from a bumper sticker I saw the other day, which read: "Get In...

...My dear mother would be ashamed of my feelings...

...On the South Side, a young guy in a beater looked over at me at a stoplight in a way that made the word askance all too vivid...

...They assume that you've already had your break...

...One of the reasons I am nervous about my new Jaguar is that I don't want any word out about me at all...

...Which I did...