Thomas Wolfe, page 481
But now, having spoken to Joe with a painful effort at friendly greeting, an “Oh, yes! How are you? I’ve been reading your manuscript,” the confession was too much for him, and the old note of scorn began to appear in the richly sonorous tones.
“Of course, to tell the truth, I haven’t read it,” boomed Mr. Malone, beginning to tap impatiently upon the edges of the sofa. “No one who has an atom of intelligence would attempt to read a manuscript, but I’ve looked into it. I’ve—I’ve read a few pages.” This admission obviously cost him a great effort, but he wrenched it out at length. “I’ve—I’ve come across one or two things in it that—that didn’t seem bad. Not bad, that is”—he was snarling in good form now—“compared to the usual nauseating drivel that gets published, and that passes in this Noble and Enlightened Land of Ours for Belles-Lettres. Not bad when compared to the backwoods bilge of Mr. Sinclair Lewis. Not bad when compared to the niggling nuances of that neurotic New Englander from Missouri, Mr. T. S. Eliot, who after baffling an all-too-willing world for years by the production of such incomprehensible nonsense as ‘The Waste Land’ and ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ and gaining for himself a reputation for perfectly enormous erudition among the readers of Kalamazoo, has now, my friends, turned prophet, priest, and political revolutionary, and is at the present moment engaged in stunning the entire voting population of that great agnostic republic known as the British Isles with the information that he—God save the mark!—Mr. Eliot from Missouri, has become a Royalist! A Royalist, if you please,” choked Mr. Malone, “and an Anglo-Catholic.”
“No,” said Mr. Malone, after a brief pause to catch his breath, “I have not read much of this young man’s book—a few words here and there, a passage now and then. But compared to Mr. Eliot’s portentous bilge, the perfumed piffle of Mr. Thornton Wilder”—he began to rock back and forth with the old red glitter in his eyes—“the elephantine imbecility of Mr. Theodore Dreiser, the moon-struck idiocies of the Sherwood Andersons, the Carl Sandburgs, the Ernest Hemingway ‘I am dumb’ school, the various forms of quackery purveyed by the various Frosts, O’Neills, and Jeffers, the Cabells, Glasgows, Peterkins, and Cathers, the Bromfields and Fitzgeralds, the Kansas Tolstois, the Tennessee Chekhovs, the Dakota Dostoevskis, and the Idaho Ibsens”—he choked—“compared to all the seven hundred and ninety-six varieties of piffle, bilge, quack-salvery, and hocus-pocus that are palmed off upon the eager citizens of this Great Republic by the leading purveyors of artistic hogwash, what this young man has written is not bad.” And after struggling stertorously for breath, he at last exploded in a final despairing effort. “It’s all swill!” he snarled. “Everything they print is swill! If you find four words that are not swill, why then”—he gasped, and threw up his hands again—“print it! Print it!”
And having thus disposed of a large part of modern American writing, if not to his utter satisfaction, at least to his utter exhaustion, Mr. Malone rocked back and forth for several minutes, breathing like a porpoise and doing the devil’s jig of knee and toe. Finally he slopped out a staggering slug of Scotch and gulped it down, then subsided into silence, muttering once more, “Print it!”
There was a rather awkward pause at the conclusion of this tirade. Few people attempted to interpose an answer to the vituperations of Mr. Seamus Malone; there was in his approach to matters a kind of tornado-like completeness that rendered argument, if not impotent, at least comparatively useless.
After a painful silence, however, more to restore the aspects of polite conversation than for any other reason, one of the audience—the young man with the beautiful wife—inquired with just the right note of respectful hesitancy, “What—what do you think of Mr. Joyce?” Mr. Joyce, indeed, amid the general wreckage seemed at the moment one of the few undemolished figures left in modern literature. “You—you know him, don’t you?”
It was evident at once that the question was unfortunate. Red fire began to flame again in the Malone eye, and he was already rubbing his claw-like hands back and forth across the hinges of his bony knees.
“What,” Mr. Malone began in an extremely rich foreboding tone of voice, “what do I think of Mr. Joyce? And do I know him? I presume, sir,” Mr. Malone continued, very slowly, “that you are asking me if I know Mr. James Joyce, formerly a citizen of Dublin, but at present”—here his pale lips writhed around in a meaningful smile—“at the present moment, if I mistake not, a resident of the Left Bank of Paris. Yes, sir, I do. I have known Mr. James Joyce for a very long time, a very long time indeed. Too, too long a time. I had the honor—call it, rather, the Proud Privilege”—the choking note was evident—“of watching young Mr. Joyce grow up in the years after I moved to Dublin. And surely, my friends, it is a proud privilege for one so humble as myself”—here he beckoned sneeringly to his frail breast—“to be able to claim such glorious intimacy with the Great Mumbo Jumbo of Modern Literature, the holy prophet of the Intelligentsia, who in one staggering tome exhausts everything there is to write about—to say nothing of everyone who has read it. Do I know Mr. Joyce? Sir, I think I may modestly claim that happy distinction,” Mr. Malone remarked, with a slight convulsion of the lips. “I have known the gentleman in question for forty years, if not exactly like a brother”—jeeringly—“at least quite well enough. And what do I think of Mr. Joyce, you ask? Well,” Mr. Malone went on in a tone of sonorous reflectiveness, “let me see, what do I think of Mr. Joyce? Mr. Joyce, first of all, is a little bourgeois Irishman of provincial tastes who has spent a lifetime on the continent of Europe in a completely fruitless attempt to overcome the Jesuit bigotry, prejudice, and narrowness of his childhood training. Mr. Joyce began his literary career as a fifth-rate poet, from there proceeded to become a seventh-rate short-story writer, graduated from his mastery in this field into a ninth-rate dramatist, from this developed into a thirteenth-rate practitioner of literary Mumbo-Jumboism which is now held in high esteem by the Cultured Few,” Mr. Malone sneered, “and I believe is now engaged in the concoction of a piece of twenty-seventh-rate incoherency, as if the possibilities in this field had not already been exhausted by the master’s preceding opus.”
In the pause that followed, while Mr. Malone drank and in a manner composed himself, some person of great daring was heard to murmur that he had thought that parts of Ulysses were rather good.
Mr. Malone took this mild dissension very well. He rocked back and forth a little, and then, waving his thin white hand with a gesture of pitying concessiveness, remarked, “Oh, I suppose there is some slight talent there—some minor vestiges, at any rate. Strictly speaking, of course, the fellow is a school-teacher, a kind of small pedant who should be teaching the sixth form somewhere in a Jesuit seminary. But he had something—not a great deal, but something. Of course”—here the gorge began to rise again, and red, baleful lightnings shot out from his eyes—“of course, the amazing thing is the reputation the fellow has gotten for himself when he had no more to start with. It’s extremely amusing,” cried Mr. Malone, and his lips writhed horribly in an attempt at laughter. “There were at least a dozen people in Dublin at the time who could have done the job Joyce tried to do in Ulysses, and done it much better!” he choked. “Gogarty, who is twenty times the man Joyce is, could have done it. A. E. could have done it. Ernest Boyd could have done it. Yeats could have done it. Even—even Moore or Stephens could have done it.” He rocked back and forth, and suddenly snarled, “I could have done it! And why didn’t I?” he demanded furiously, thus asking a question that was undoubtedly in everyone’s mind at the moment. “Why, because I simply wasn’t interested! It didn’t matter enough to any of us! We were interested in—in other things—in living! Of course,” he choked, “that is the history of all modern literature, isn’t it? All of the people who really could write stay out of it. Why? Because,” boomed Mr. Malone, “they’re not interested in it. They’re interested in other things!”
He was interested in his whisky glass at the moment; he looked around and found it, reached for it, and drank. Then, with a tortured effort at a smile, he turned to the young man with the beautiful wife and said, “But come! Let’s talk of something pleasanter. I hear you’re going abroad soon?”
“Yes,” the young man answered, with a suggestion of relief. “We’re going over for a year.”
“We’re terribly thrilled over going,” the young woman remarked. “We know you’ve lived there such a lot, and we’d be awfully grateful for any advice you’d give us.”
“Where are you going,” said Malone. “Are you—are you just traveling around”—his lips twisted, but he controlled himself—“or are you going to settle down and live in one place?”
“Oh, we’re going to live in one place,” the young man said quickly. “We’re going to settle down in Paris.”
There was a pause, then the young wife leaned toward the great man a little anxiously and said, “Don’t you think that’s a good idea, Mr. Malone?”
Now, if Mr. Malone had been expressing his own opinion, five minutes or five months before, he certainly would have thought it was a good idea to go to Paris and live there for a year. He had said so himself on many occasions—occasions when he had denounced American provincialism, American puritanism, American crassness, and American ignorance of Continental life. Moreover, he had frequently demanded why Americans, instead of trying to gulp all Europe down at once, didn’t settle down in Paris for a year, live quietly, and observe the people. Moreover, if the young man and his wife had announced their intention of settling down in London for a year, the effect on Mr. Malone would have been easily predictable. His pale, rubbery lips would have twisted around scornfully in his whiskers, and he would have ironically inquired, “Why London? Why”—here he would have begun to breathe hoarsely—“why inflict the dull provincialism of English life, the dreary monotony of English food, the horrible torpor of the English mind, when only seven hours away across the Channel you have the opportunity of living cheaply in the most beautiful and civilized city in the world, of living comfortably, luxuriously, in Paris for a fraction of what your living would cost you in London, and furthermore of associating with a gay and civilized people instead of with the provincial Babbitts of the British bourgeoisie?”
Why, then, did the old red flood of vituperative scorn rise up in Mr. Malone now that the young people had expressed their intention of doing the very thing he himself would have urged them to do?
Well, first of all, they were telling him, and Mr. Malone could not brook such impudence. Second, he rather regarded the city of Paris as his own private discovery, and too many damned Americans had begun to go there. Certainly no one could go there without his consent.
So now that these two young people had decided, all by themselves, to go to Paris for a year, he found their puppy-like insolence insupportable. For a moment after the young man and his wife had spoken there was silence; red fire began to flash from the Malone eye, he rocked gently back and forth and rubbed his knees, but for the nonce controlled himself. “Why Paris?” he inquired, quietly enough, but with a note of ironic sarcasm in the rich timbre of his voice. “Why Paris?” he repeated.
“But—don’t you think that’s a good place to go to, Mr. Malone?” the young woman anxiously inquired. “I don’t know,” she went on rapidly, “but—but Paris sounds so gay, and jolly, and sort of exciting.”
“Gay? Jolly? Exciting?” said Mr. Malone, with an air of serious reflection. “Oh, I suppose some gaiety is left. That is, if Midwestern tourists, avaricious hotelkeepers, and the Messrs. Thomas Cook have not utterly destroyed what was left of it. I suppose, of course,” he went on with a slight choke, “that you’ll do all the things your compatriots usually do—sit twelve hours a day among the literati at Le Dôme, or on the terrace of the Café de la Paix, and come back at the end of your year having seen nothing of Paris, nothing of the French, nothing of the real life of the people, but utterly, thoroughly convinced that you know all!” He laughed furiously, and said, “Really, it’s most amusing, isn’t it, the way all you young Americans nowadays flock to Paris? Here you are—young people, presumably of some intelligence—and where do you go,” sneered Mr. Malone. “Paris!” He snarled the word out as if the very stench of it disgusted him. “Pa-a-ris, one of the dullest, dreariest, most expensive, noisiest, and most uncomfortable cities in the world, inhabited by a race of penny-pinching shopkeepers, cheating taxi-drivers and waiters, the simply appalling French middle class, and the excursions of the Cook’s tourists.”
There was a stricken silence for a moment; the beautiful young wife looked crushed, bewildered; then the young man cleared his throat and said a trifle nervously, “But—but where would you go, Mr. Malone?”
“My dear fellow,” Mr. Malone said, “there are dozens of more interesting places than Paris. Go anywhere, but don’t go there!”
“But where?” the young woman said. “Where would you suggest, Mr. Malone? What other city can you think of?”
“Why—why—why, Copenhagen!” Mr. Malone suddenly boomed triumphantly. “By all means, go to Copenhagen! Of course,” he sneered, “the news has probably not yet reached the Greenwich Village Bohemians on the Left Bank, Midwestern school-teachers, or other great globe-trotters of that ilk. They’ve probably never heard of the place, since it’s probably a little off their beaten route. They probably would be surprised to know that Copenhagen is the gay-est, pleasantest, most civilized city in Europe, populated by the most charming and intelligent people in the world. The news, no doubt,” he jeered, “would come as a distinct shock to our Bohemian friends on the Left Bank, whose complete conception of the geography of Europe does not extend, apparently, beyond the Eiffel Tower. But go to Copenhagen, by all means. Pa-a-ris,” he snarled. “Not in a million years—Copenhagen! Copenhagen!” he yelled, threw his hands up in a gesture eloquent of exasperated futility over the spectacle of human idiocy, gasped stertorously for breath, and shot claw-like fingers clutching for the whisky glass.
Then suddenly, seeing the stricken figure, the somewhat appalled face, of young Mr. Doaks, so swiftly and so sharply caught here among imagined great ones of the earth, and finding all of it so strange, Mr. Malone, as if the face of the young Doaks brought sharply back and instantly the memory of the young Malone, and of all Doakses, all Malones that ever were, put down his whisky glass and cried out warmly, richly, “But I thought that what I read was—was—” Just for a moment the pale lips writhed tormented in his beard, and then—oh, tormented web of race and man—he got it out. He smiled at the young Doaks quite winningly and said, “I liked your book. Good luck to you.”
Such a man as this was Mr. Seamus Malone.
[¬]
OKTOBERFEST
[Scribner’s Magazine, June 1937]
One Sunday afternoon, at the end of September, I made my way, accompanied by Heinrich Bahr, to the Theresien Fields, on the eastern edges of Munich, where the October fair was going on. As we walked along, past the railway station and toward the carnival grounds, the street, and all the streets that led to it, began to swarm with people. Most of them were native Müncheners, but a great number were also Bavarian country people. These Bavarians were brawny men and women who stained the crowd brilliantly with the rich dyes of their costume—the men in their elaborately embroidered holiday shorts and stockings, the women in their bright dresses and lace bodices, marching briskly along with the springy step of the mountaineer. These peasants had the perfect flesh and the sound teeth of animals. Their smooth round faces bore only the markings of the sun and the wind: they were unworn by the thought and pain that waste away man’s strength. I looked at them with a pang of regret and envy—their lives were so strong and confident, and having missed so much they seemed to have gained so greatly. Their lives were limited to one or two desires—most of them had never read a book, a visit to this magic city of Munich was to them a visit to the heart of the universe, and the world that existed beyond their mountains had no real existence for them at all.
As we neared the Theresien Fields, the crowd became so thick that movement was impeded and slowed down. The huge noises of the fair came to us now, and I could see the various buildings. My first feeling as I entered the Fields was one of overwhelming disappointment. What lay before me and around me seemed to be a smaller and less brilliant Coney Island. There were dozens of booths and sheds filled with cheap dolls, teddy bears, candy wrappers, clay targets, etc., with all the accompanying claptrap of two-headed monsters, crazy houses, fat ladies, dwarfs, palmists, hypnotists, as well as all the elaborate machinery for making one dizzy: whirling carriages and toy automobiles that spun about on an electrified floor, all filled with people who screamed with joy when the crazy vehicles crashed together and were released again by an attendant.
Heinrich Bahr began to laugh and stare like a child. The childlike capacity of all these people for amusement was astonishing. Like children, they never seemed to grow weary of the whole gaudy show. Great fat fellows with shaven heads and creased necks rode on the whirling and whipping machines, or rode round and round, again and again, on the heaving wooden horses of the merry-go-rounds. Heinrich was fascinated: I rode with him several times on the breathless dip-and-dive of the great wooden trestle-like railway, and then was whipped and spun dizzy in several of the machines.
Finally Heinrich was content. We moved slowly along down the thronging central passage of the fair until we came to a more open space at the edge of the Fields. Here from a little platform a man was haranguing the crowd in harsh, carnival-barker’s German. Beside him on the platform stood a young man whose body and arms were imprisoned in a sleeveless canvas jacket and manacled with a chain. Presently the barker stopped talking, the young man thrust his feet through canvas loops, and he was hauled aloft, feet first, until he hung face downward above the staring mob. I watched him as he began his desperate efforts to free himself from the chain and jacket that fettered him, until I saw his face turn purple, and the great veins stand out in ropes upon his forehead. Meanwhile, a woman passed through the crowd soliciting contributions, and when she had got all the money the crowd would yield, the young man, whose swollen face was now almost black with blood, freed himself very quickly and was lowered to the earth. The crowd dispersed almost, it seemed to me, with a kind of sullenness as if the thing they had waited to see had now happened but had somehow disappointed them, and while the barker began his harangue again, the young man sat in a chair recovering himself, with his hand before his eyes. Meanwhile, the woman who had collected money stood by him anxiously, looking at him, and in a moment spoke to him. And somehow just by their nearness to each other and by no other outward sign there was communicated to me a sense of tenderness and love.
