"cool crowd"...yeah, that is definitely the vibe I get from reading descriptions of the interactions between Leon and the more famous anarchists of their time in America. It's kind of sad, but at the same time, it's entirely predictable because these people were all human. they were all real people, not heroes or demigods. While it's fine to admire a writers' writing, an activists' actions, or whatever have you...why deify? The impulse is disgusting, frankly, when you really look at it and see it for what it is...just another strange and twisted habit. It invokes for me the idea of an addict, thinking back about the twists and turns and nature of their addictive behaviors, their old 'habit', after the time and repose offered by rehabilitation and abstinence thereof. One can reflect on it as, just, well, silliness that got entirely out of hand, and became pretty hurtful to everyone involved.

Of course, I can't say anything about social dynamics from so long ago, read third and fourth hand. but regardless, it is striking how much those descriptions forcibly reminded me of interactions I've had in my life among friends. And let me tell you, I've always been the Leon, not the Alexander.