A friend told Neville that he had loaned Neville's book Out Of This World to a black actor about to give up the theater; the man did not believe it until Neville autographed a book for him with Blake's line about persisting in folly, after which he persisted in claiming success and won a Greyhound commercial, movie and TV contracts, the Diahann Carroll show, and a pilot for Danny Thomas.
Date (happened)
A few years ago
unresolved
A few years ago
relative · probable
Source
"A few years ago", told in Freeneville Rock Pdf (nid 2041)
Told
19 February 1969
estimated
Source
delivery claim d1 on lecture nid 2041 (The Rock), 1969-02-19 exact/certain, chrome site-nav header dateline
Why
d0 (Jan-Aug 1968) is set aside per the lecture's own chrome-vs-internal-evidence conflict resolution, not silently ignored. The event's existing 'a few years ago' field_date claim is not further resolved here; the processing notes mention an unrelated 'spring of 1967' internal clue that this passage's own text does not clearly tie to the David Moses story.
Reasoning
Passage 552162 is Neville narrating, in the lecture itself, the David Moses persistence story. Lecture nid 2041 carries two delivery claims: d0 (Jan-Aug 1968, doubtful, weak internal-evidence estimate about upcoming TV/pilot work) and d1 (1969-02-19, certain, from a document-native chrome dateline). The lecture's own reasoning explicitly treats d1's chrome dateline as the stronger source and demotes d0 rather than silently preferring it, so the telling date follows d1.
Sources
Source
- The Rock ¶2 (Then one day I autographed a book for this gentleman with these words of Blake: “If the fool will persist in his folly he will become wise.” This gentleman’s name is David Moses.)