By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Our Best Friend turns to Sue through the mother, tying loyalty, self-reproach, and inner selfhood to the claim that space and time need no help.
Sue is introduced through maternal recognition, as if the mother already knows both the speaker's faults and his allegiance. The half-joking admission that it is not hard to be no good gives the tenderness a rough, self-mocking edge. Against that, "space and time" needing no help makes the final appeal to the inner self feel almost impossible, something rarer than anything cosmic.
'Our Best Friend': Sue, mom knows, 'excuse the pum'; she understands it is not hard for him to be no good and is completely on her side. Space and time need no help; inner self hard to come by.