The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [164]
Yes, Miss Helledell, two more of the same, waiter. He lights a cigarette, revolving slowly in the leather arc of their round booth.. You were saying, Miss Helledell?
Do you think Randall comes across?
Randall Clandeborn, mmm. (Now which one was he?) Ay, yes, I think he's successful on the whole, but perhaps you need a little sharper definition on him. We can discuss that when we get back to the office. (After the drinks he will have a headache.) To be frank, Miss Helledell, I'm not really worried about your characters, I know they'll come across.
Do you think so, Mr. Hearn? Your opinion means an awful lot to me.
Oh, yes, it's a very successful job.
And George Andrew Johannesson, how is he?
Well, to tell you the truth, Miss Helledell, I should prefer to discuss it when we've got the manuscript between us. I remember the characters perfectly but I'm awfully bad on names. It's one of my faults for which you'll have to forgive me.
And there is always the game of mentally plucking, one by one, all the feathers in her hat.
Or the young serious novelist, not quite good enough, he has decided.
Well, now, Mr. Godfrey, I think you've got a damn good book there and it's a damn shame that publishing exigencies being what they are, this is not quite the season, perhaps in thirty-six, it would have been a classic if it had come out in the twenties, George, for example, liked it a hell of a lot.
Yeah, I understand, but still it seems to me you could take a chance, after all, that crap you put out, I understand, bread and butter, but a serious book is a publisher's only excuse for being.
Sure, it's a damn shame. Sipping his drink mournfully. You know if you intend to do another book we're awfully interested in it.
The weekends in the summer:
You have to talk to Carnes, what a delicious humor. I don't mean he's quaint or anything like that, he's a man in his own right of course that's perfectly apparent, but as a gardener he's a find. Even the natives consider him one apart, with that Lancashire accent of his -- If i' twere rainin' soup, there Ay'd be stahndin' with a fork in me hand, his hostess says, putting down her drink.
And across the porch the gossip is easily overheard. I can't tell you what a bitch she is, the woman is incredible. When she went out on tour she hand-picked her leading man, purely by the genital heft, so to speak, and when he started fooling around with poor little Judy, damn if Beroma didn't give a party to which she invited everyone but little Judy and the corpus delicti.
In the office in the middle of the afternoon: He's coming up today, Hearn, he would, we're all invited. Ellison has suggested that our attendance is requested.
Oh, Gawd.
Get up near him when he's had five or six. He says the most amazing things. And talk to his wife, the new one, she's fantastic.
In a bar with a Harvard contemporary:
Hearn, you have no idea what it's like working on Space. That man! He's hideous, he's a Fascist. The writers he's got up there, the talent, all grubbing away, afraid to leave 'cause it's two hundred a week, and they don't know what they can do on their own. I tell you my stomach turns every time I see them grind out the particular brand of swill at which he's so tricky. Jabbing out a cigarette. What are you in this racket for?
I'm playing it for the laughs.
Sure you're not trying to be a writer from the wrong end?
No, I'm not writer, I don't have a deep enough itch.
Jesus, there's a million who have. I don't know anybody who's worth a goddam.
Who does?
Get potted, get screwed, and get up in the morning, somehow.
Sure.
And the women:
Hearn, she says, in her deep husky voice, you're a shell, you're nothing but a goddam shell. After you've had fifty thousand of us up here, you'll probably cut it off and hang it up to dry. You learned an acceptable wiggle somewhere along the line and you think that's all you need to get by. You've got a faeces complex, haven't you, you can't stand being touched. You get me so goddam mad, a million miles away, aren't you, nothing ever hits you. Nothing's worth touching.