For most of the other boys there, Camp Koenig was a mountain paradise of fun and camaraderie. For Robert, it was an ordeal. Everything about him made him a target for the cruelties young adolescents delight in inflicting on those who are shy, sensitive or different. The other boys soon began calling him “Cutie” and teased him mercilessly. But Robert refused to fight back. Shunning athletics, he walked the trails, collecting rocks. He made one friend, who recalled that Robert was obsessed that summer with the writings of George Eliot. The novelist’s major work, Middlemarch, appealed to him
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