someone laughed at his comments and he felt a part of a shadow fall off him and his self expand and someone asked who he was , and soon he was invited closer to the center of things , to the group of people were supposed to be worth knowing , to the writer who puffed his chest when retelling his adventures , to the man in his cups who shone like a diamond when he could exceed the gravity of his own self-destruction , to the artist who dismissed all adulation of his latest phase with the back of his hand but ended with the same hand cupped to his ear to hear the last faint human-breathed syllables of praise .