Happening on Hapworth Street ©

“But if I dumb it down it becomes jejunely written and insipid.”

“See, right there – you did it. You said insipid, and jejunely”

“They’re perfectly pertinent words.”

“Yes but my readers don’t want words like jejunely.
Look, all I’m saying is people don’t get your writing. I mean look at that ‘Narrative of A. Gordon of Edacious‘ for Christ’s sake. How do you expect my readers to recognize the allusions to Oscar Wilde, ‘The Great Gatsby‘, Edgar Allan Poe and especially that ‘Anselm’s Ontological Argument‘ thing?”

“The piece is parody.”

“The piece is crap. It’s a travesty. A dozen educated Englishmen couldn’t untangle that mess. I mean ‘Born in a Handbag‘, Seriously?”

“It’s a joke. It refers to ‘The Importance of . . .”

“I know what it refers to – and ‘The Treachery of Images‘ – June 16, 1931 – really? Personal Odysseys?”

“I thought it was clever.”

“Clever, sure, but this – ‘La Tour Eiffel and seventy one more are buried beneath many coats of paint‘.”

“What?” Asked Jeremy.

“It’s too complicated.” Said the man behind the desk. “And this – ‘Let us sell Benjy’s pasture so that Quentin may go to Harvard.“

“Directly from ‘The Sound and the Fury‘.”

“But who would know that, Jeremy?”

“That’s not my problem.”

“As a writer it is your problem.”

“I can’t compromise my writing for the reader.”

“Fitzgerald did.”

“Oh now I’m Fitzgerald?”

“Hardly, I was only saying . . .”

“Besides, Fitzgerald didn’t compromise for the reader; he compromised for the publisher.”

“And that’s all I’m asking you to do.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then you shall remain unpublished.”

“Then I shall remain unpublished.”

Dejected, Jeremy Glass collected his writings into a small portmanteau, thanked the man behind the desk and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Hapworth 16. The man behind the desk followed Jeremy as far as the door, flipped the closed sign and pulled the cord that drew the blinds shut, separating himself forever from Jeremy. It was a rude gesture Jeremy thought as he headed north past the cafés and coffee shops that were beginning to overfill with an early Friday evening crowd. Later, the mass will amalgamate into an army of drinkers who will spill from bars and bistros and merge with guests from opposite eateries and pubs. Inebriated students from the law school will stumble upon one another as they teeter through thresholds in proprietary ways.
This is the way Hapworth street is in town. But beyond the university and this conurbation of shops, boutiques and outlets, where the chatter and prattle of urban festivities fade into suburban delight, Hapworth street leaves the locusts of city life behind and carries its travelers beneath a canopy of trees and into country tranquility.

Moving through the shadow of the awning of trees, and into this new sunlit surrounding, Jeremy switched his portmanteau to his left hand and let his right hand glide over the soft, fuzzy tips of the switchgrass that crowded the sidewalk.
A marsh lay behind the grass, but like tandem magicians, cattails and switchgrass worked as accomplices to conceal the marsh from Hapworth street. A crane cried in the distance as unseen swamp-frogs burped themselves and splashed their elongated bodies into the shallow water nearby. A Marsh Wren rose and alighted itself on one cattail and then another before burying itself again in the safety of the thicket. The cattails stood tall as a light breeze bent the switchgrass. With a bow, the switchgrass seemed to be acknowledging Jeremy’s approach. A short waterfall acted as liaison between the marsh and Lake Seymour, a misnomer for sure as Lake Seymour is no more than a flooded marshy area choked back by a dam that is Hapworth Street bridge.

Standing on Hapworth Street bridge, Jeremy leaned over and watched the water as it fell from the lake into the marsh. The water seemed to sit still under the arc of the bridge but sprang to life as it splashed and exploded into smaller and smaller droplets, falling onto one rock after another – down, collecting itself again to form the water of the marsh below. Jeremy walked to the lake side of the bridge and, like Narcissus in the painting by Caravaggio, admired his reflection in the smooth surface of Lake Seymour. Jeremy wondered if one can be sure of one’s thoughts only while staring at one’s reflection under a bridge. Deciding this to be the case, Jeremy unbuckled the portmanteau, separated the two halves, and poured the contents into the lake. He set the bag down and walked back to the marsh side of the bridge and waited for his writings to appear from under the bridge. One at a time, page after page floated out, then dropped over the edge of the waterfall.

Jeremy picked up his empty portmanteau, turned back towards town, and said out loud to no one, “Then I shall remain unpublished.”