Sophie's Choice - William Styron [70]
“Jewish?” I put in. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, only that I’m quite certain that Jewish writing is going to be the important force in American literature in the coming years.”
“Oh, it is, is it?” I said a little defensively. “How do you know? Is that why you said I had courage to write about the South?”
“I didn’t say Jewish writing was going to be the only force, just the important force,” he replied pleasantly and evenly, “and I’m not in the slightest trying to suggest that you might not add something significant to your own tradition. It’s just that historically and ethnically Jews will be coming into their own in a cultural way in this postwar wave. It’s in the cards, that’s all. There’s one novel already that’s set the pace. It’s not a major book, it’s a small book but with beautiful proportions and it’s the work of a young writer of absolutely unquestionable brilliance.”
“What’s the name of it?” I asked. I think my voice had a sulky note when I added, “And who’s the brilliant writer?”
“It’s called Dangling Man,” he replied, “and it’s by Saul Bellow.”
“Well, dog my cats,” I drawled and took a sip of coffee.
“Have you read it?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I said, lying with a bald and open face.
“What did you think of it?”
I stifled a calculated yawn. “I thought it was pretty thin.” Actually, I was very much aware of the novel, but the petty spirit which so often afflicts the unpublished writer allowed me to harbor only a grudge for what I suspected was the book’s well-deserved critical approval. “It’s a very urban book,” I added, “very special, you know, a little too much of the smell of the streets about it.” But I had to concede to myself that Nathan’s words had disturbed me, as I watched him lolling so easily in the chair opposite me. Suppose, I thought, the clever son of a bitch was right and the ancient and noble literary heritage with which I had cast my lot had indeed petered out, rumbled to a feeble halt with me crushed ignominiously beneath the decrepit cartwheels? Nathan had seemed so certain and knowledgeable about other matters that in this case, too, his augury might be correct, and in a sudden weird vision—all the more demeaning because of its blatant competitiveness—I saw myself running a pale tenth in a literary track race, coughing on the dust of a pounding fast-footed horde of Bellows and Schwartzes and Levys and Mandelbaums.
Nathan was smiling at me. It seemed to be a perfectly amiable smile, with not a trace of the sardonic about it, but for an instant I felt intensely about his presence what I had already felt and what I would feel again—a fleeting moment in which the attractive and compelling in him seemed in absolute equipoise with the subtly and indefinably sinister. Then, as if something formlessly damp had stolen through the room, departing instantly, I was freed of the creepy sensation and I smiled back at him. He wore what I believe was called a Palm Beach suit, tan, smartly tailored and perceivably high-priced, and it helped make him appear not even a distant cousin of that wild apparition I had first set eyes on only days before, disheveled, in baggy slacks, raging at Sophie in the hallway. All of a sudden that fracas, his mad accusation—Spreading that twat of yours for a cheap, chiseling quack doctor!—seemed as unreal to me as dialogue spoken by the leading stinker in a long-ago, half-forgotten movie. (What had he meant by those balmy words? I wondered if I would ever find out.) As the ambiguous smile lingered on his face, I was aware that this man posed riddles of personality more exasperating and mystifying than any I had ever encountered.
“Well, at least you didn’t tell me that the novel’s dead,” I said at last, just as a phrase of music, celestial and tender, flowed down very softly from the room above and forced a change of subject.
“That’s Sophie who put the music on,” Nathan said. “I try to get her to sleep late in the morning when she doesn’t have to go to work. But she says she can