Own Writing ©

The old man understood the writing and he respected the writers who came before him, but he worried about the boy because he knew there was something about the writing the boy did not understand.

When he wrote, the old man brought all the words he knew and he imagined the words poured out before him like an unworked wooden-puzzle. The man spread the words out smoothly and flipped the words this way and turned them that way. He studied their sounds and the way the words fit, one with the other. He listened to the words and arranged them so the tongue was ready always to move forward to bring the words in. The tongue should never be offended and forced to move in two directions at once thought the man. The writing should be delicate and always flow forward. Words were meant to melt like snow on warm tongues, not to be spat about like sour things, bitter and misused. Bitter, un-bridged words caused the tongue to trip and when the tongue tripped, words became tangled and piled onto themselves. The man knew this and he understood this and as he slowly palmed the words about, the man linked fine but difficult words with other fine words so the bridge between the words was unseen. The man knew the words well but he knew he could never own the words. It was only the writing he could own, and after a lifetime of words he could not own, the man was pleased to have owned the writing, but he was not ready to relent to it.

The boy reminded his grandfather that he had written before and that he should not worry because he will write again. The old man knew this to be true but still it concerned him because this time the writing did not come, even with the drinks. It was always the drinking that made the writing possible – because it was the drinking that lead the writing.

Before, when the old man was young, the drinking made the writing easier, but now that the writing was gone, the drinking was worse and it did not bring the writing back. Now the drinking only made the writing more difficult, and difficult writing was writing that was not only difficult, but also distant, and distant writing was writing that drew the drinks in closer.

But there is more to write thought the boy – and I will write it. No one will know. I will write it for him. I will read the writers my grandfather read. I will read D. H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley. I will read the writers he liked and also the writers he disliked. I will read Marie Lowndes and her Jack the Ripper Lodger and Georges Simenon, whom he enjoyed, and I will also read the writers who gave him no happiness. I will read Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein. I will criticize the dead writers and I will criticize the writing of the dead writers and like angry torrents of spring,* I will pour my criticisms over their dead words and flood their old words with my new words and wash away their thoughts and replace them with my own. I will read the writers my grandfather read so that I can become a better writer. I will drink. And I will write fast and I will read fast and my writing will be read quickly and never misunderstood. My writing will be clear and quick and it will be loved because I want it to be loved and because that is the way it is. And no one will ever know.

*Just a fun side note to this allusion – Written by Ernest Hemingway, in an attempt to break a contract by writing something more or less unpublishable, The Torrents of Spring was a satirical treatment of pretentious writers and was sharply critical of other writers, namely Sherwood Anderson.

His Name is Sam ©

He talked to himself while he worked and this amused the boys. They laughed at the way he fought with the wastebaskets and the way he stooped when he swept and the way his arthritic hands struggled with the books when he restocked the shelves.

His name was Sam and with a bent finger, he removed a book from a waist-high shelf, then glanced over at the gang of boys. One of the students imitated the movements Sam made and whenever Sam looked over, as quick as a fly, the boy would look away and laugh with his friends. The boy plucked an imaginary book from a make-believe shelf then jerked his head around. His friends laughed. Sam heard the boy say it was odd for an old colored man who probably couldn’t read to be working in a bookstore. Sam felt the punch but plunged the book under his arm and shuffled about as though he were paying no attention to the boys.

The boys were students from the high school and when the rain became sharp and direct they plowed inside to wait. They gathered by the door and watched shoppers dash from the bookstore with their newly bought books; the books were bagged and held above their foreheads to deflect the rain as they ran. They avoided puddles by darting in long strides and short leaps like children playing hopscotch on steamy hot pavement.

The boy’s name was Eddie. He had a clubbed-foot that caused him to limp when he walked and to lean slightly to one side as he stood. A girl named Connie hung onto Eddie. She rested her chin on his low hanging shoulder when he was still. When he wasn’t still and he moved about, she cupped her palms around his arm as though she were measuring his small round bicep. Connie did not laugh at Eddie’s jokes, she only looked past the other boys and watched the old man approach. The boys became quiet, and like heavy drops of drizzle on an open window ledge, their unkind comments fell away forgotten.

When Eddie turned back, he was surprised to find the old man standing in front of him.

“One seventy-eight.” Sam said, offering Eddie two books.

“What?” Eddied asked, smirking and twisting to look back over each shoulder at his friends.

“Plath.” Sam answered. “This thing you’re doing – imitating me, reminds me of a scene from The Bell Jar.”

Connie leaned into Eddie’s back and stretched her arm forward to take the books. Connie smiled an apologetic smile, then looked away, embarrassed. Connie opened the first book to page one seventy-eight, but before she could read from the page, Sam began reading, from memory.

“I sat on one end of a wooden bench in the grassy square between the four brick walls of the hospital. My mother, in her purple cartwheel dress, sat at the other end. She had her head propped in her hand, index finger on her cheek and thumb under her chin.
Mrs. Tomolillo was sitting with some dark-haired laughing Italian on the next bench down. Every time my mother moved, Mrs Tomolillo imitated her. Now Mrs. Tomolillo was sitting with her index finger on her cheek and her thumb under her chin, and her head tilted wistfully to one side.
‘Don’t move,’ I told my mother in a low voice. ‘That woman’s imitating you.’
My mother turned to glance round, but as quick as a wink, Mrs Tomolillo dropped her fat white hands in her lap and started talking vigorously to her friends.
‘Why no, she’s not,’ my mother said. ‘She’s not even paying any attention to us.’
But the minute my mother turned round to me again, Mrs. Tomolillo matched the tips of her fingers together the way my mother had just done and cast a black, mocking look at me.”

Connie closed the book and moved the other book to the top.

“Oates,” Sam smiled at Connie, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

With some effort, Sam thumbed open the book for Connie and patted the tip of his crook’d finger onto the page.

Connie brushed her hair back from her eyes and began to read.

“He almost fell. But, like a clever drunken man, he managed to catch his balance. He wobbled in his high boots and grabbed hold of one of the porch posts. One of his boots was at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn’t in it. It pointed out to the left, bent at the ankle. He had to bend and adjust his boots. Evidently his feet did not go all the way down; the boots must have been stuffed with something so that he would seem taller. His face was red from bending over, or maybe from embarrassment -  because she had seen his boots. . .”

Connie continued to read aloud from the book. Sam went back to sweeping the floors and restocking the shelves. His lips followed along as the girl read from the book. Sam was not proud of what he had done to the boy, but he felt honest – and he felt satisfied with feeling honest, and feeling honest, Sam thought, must be a fine replacement for feeling proud.

Eddie’s eyes were cast down and he looked at his feet and shifted his weight. Connie’s voice faded into a distant purr, her words slowly overtaken by the mature drone of rain outside the bookstore.

His Midnight Mezzanine ©

Although he had the habit of refreshing his throat more often than seemed necessary and it was not uncommon that he slurped his soup or cleared his nose at the dinner table, Mr. Casaubon was hardly an unpleasant man. He was easy enough to be friendly with and the lively conversation he offered over copious bottles of wine with his meals more than made up for his occasional unpolished behaviors. He was clean, well dressed, and literate in nearly all things well written.

His tweed jackets with their leather elbow patches, leather patches that were sewn on long before he swore off eating and wearing animals, smelled of dignity and rich pipe tobacco. His breath caught thick within his throat when he smoked. His wine and books came from old stock. His books were shelved on the wall of a well lit mezzanine that circled his coffee colored library. Books filled the walled shelves above and below the mezzanine. They were piled onto end tables, discarded beside reading chairs and stacked onto antique rugs from locations long forgotten.

He was reminded that his edification felt less than perfect when, in the evenings after intimate dinner parties, repairing to his library left him feeling, without justification, under-educated. Nonetheless, before retiring to bed, he spent his evenings in the library where he read with writers long deceased.

“And then the young lady asked whether I had written for any other magazines.” Mr. Fitzgerald continued.
“Oh yes, I assured her, I’ve had stories and plays in Smart Set. – Would you believe the young lady actually shuddered before I could continue and asked, ‘The Smart Set, how could you?’”
Here Scott continued mockingly, in a young woman’s voice.
”’Why, they publish stuff about girls in blue bathtubs, and silly things like that.’ – I then had the magnificent joy of telling her she was referring to my play Porcelain and Pink, which appeared there several months ago.”

Mr. Casaubon chuckled with delight and rose to offer his friend another drink.
Mr. Fitzgerald was already standing, his back was turned, not deliberately, to Ernest and Eliot who were sitting across the library privately pontificating Paris.

“There is never an ending to Paris,” Ernest was telling Eliot, “and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.”

“Yes,” replied Eliot, “and we always return to it no matter how it changes us or how we change it. Paris is always worth it, and you receive from it equally whatever you take to it.”

“Ah, but that is the way Paris is when you are very poor and very happy.” Offered Ernest, “Besides, if you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, because Paris is a moveable feast.”

“A skoal then, to a moveable feast!” Said Eliot as he raised his glass to his friend Ernest.

“Let us go there, you and I,
while the evening is spread out against the sky,
we shall not ask, ‘Where is it?’
But let us go and make our visit.”

“And shall the best of your writing last as long as there is literature.” Answered Ernest as their glasses clinked.

It was nightly that in this way dialogue and theater continued in Casaubon’s thoughts.

The clink from the coin woke Casaubon and stole him from his visitors. The coin clinked, then rattled to rest inside the solid tin cup that rested on the sidewalk. Casaubon emptied the coin into his palm, gathered his belongings from the church doorway and carried himself onward through certain half deserted streets.