in many cases, obscure books no longer available in this country.
This was standard operating procedure, whether the topic in
question was the Giant Ground Sloth or Catherine the Great.

After having absorbed this exhaustive amount of material, he
would make notes on little 3-by-5 index cards, which he would
then file under the appropriate subheading in a card-file box.
Usually he would amass hundreds and hundreds of these cards
in several boxes, before beginning to block out his piece. In some
cases, he would read more than twenty-five thick volumes before
writing a one-thousand-word piece. Cuppy felt that he must
know his subject as thoroughly as was humanly possible before
going to work on it.

Sometimes Cuppy would stay in his Greenwich Village apart-
ment for weeks at a time, having food sent in as needed. The
apartment overflowed with books -- in bookshelves along all liv-
ing-room walls right up to the ceiling, in his bedroom, and even
in the kitchen -- over the refrigerator, on top of the stove, and on
the supply shelves.

Usually his day would start in the late afternoon. After sev-
eral cups of coffee, he was ready to start sorting cards, or writing
notes to himself. He'd work until about eight or nine, then take
a nap until midnight, when he'd fix himself dinner -- generally
hamburger, green peas, and coffee. While enjoying his second
and third cups of coffee he would phone his few close friends --
often his only contact with the outside world. Then back to work
till five, six, seven, or eight in the morning.

These, he discovered, were the quietest hours in the Village
apartment which he inhabited during the last twenty years of his
life. Cuppy hated noise in all forms, and throughout those twenty
years he was tortured daily by the sounds which issued from a
school playground directly adjoining the building in which he
lived. From his small terrace he was also subjected to the wailing
of numerous babies in nearby buildings. Yet he never thought of

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