Well, bud, should you ever blow your top and throw in the towel as I have done, you are always welcome to join my troupe: voices out of air, worm’s-eye of death, stockings of steel, wax bullets, creosote dawns, eternal confusion.
So your old man goes to the opera? Well, there are a few good ones. Do you think he’s playing dilettante? I doubt if he amuses you as much as he irritates you. You laughter seems forced.
I’m still making plans to gorge myself on ancient literature, a study of the Harvard Classics—and so far, all I’ve read is a book on duck hunting. This, added to my former study on the operation of the mesocolon gives me a solid literary background . . .
There were more papers on the bed, but he didn’t read them. It wasn’t any good. Too disjointed. He went back to the desk, sat down, dipped his pen and wrote:
“A fit of terrible gloom came over him. It was Sunday, a cold, dark December Sunday and there wasn’t any heat in the room. One shade was down, the other up; the electric lights were on but the room was full of shadow. Newspapers were all over the floor, covered with shoeprints, dirt; an empty cracker box, an unmade bed, the immense tick of clock. It was too cold to go out, he was broke, two bottles (empty of whisky) stood on the dresser. All his clothing was hocked, and open on the table was the ‘Help Wanted’ section of the newspaper, three or four ads circled. His back ached, he was sick: the rent was due, and it was cold, very cold.
“If I ever get over this, he thought, I’ll save money. I’ll get a nice apartment with a refrigerator. I’ll cook, I’ll drink fruit juices, I’ll smoke a pipe, I’ll wear clean, bright sweaters and buy rare and unusual books . . .”
He wrote on and on, and on.
Quixote 19, Autumn 1958
Dialogue: Dead Man on the Fence
Scene: cheap room, South Hollywood, 3rd floor, half-empty wine bottle, 3 or 4 books: The Lives of the Composers, Jeno Barcsay’s Anatomy for the Artist, a watercolor painting “female figure” by Eric Heckel and another watercolor by Lee J. Wexler, 1952, a telephone, newspapers, correspondence, dirty stockings freckle the floor. The scene opens (and closes) in this room, between 2 writers, the first writer the owner (as long as the rent is paid) of the room and the second writer a visitor. . . .
Second writer (let’s call him Karl Thornton): I sold this movie script to a producer. He thinks it’s great. Can you imagine a surrealist Western? Can you imagine an abstract Western?
First writer (let’s call him Henry Knapp): I can’t imagine any kind of Western.
Karl: Now I’ve got this next one. It is about a bank holdup. I’ve got 4 boys from Oxford, suave, who pull the job. I need some wild dialogue, way out. They told me you were the boy to do it. I’ve seen your poetry. It’s the maddest thing since—since Rabelais shit on them and made them like it.
Henry: I know it sounds corny, but I cannot compromise.
Karl: That’s just the beauty of it. You don’t have to compromise! They don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I have a negro running through the fields with his pants down, screaming, “Kiss my black ass!” You see what I mean?
Henry: No.
Karl: By the way, how did you come out on, well, how did it work out?
Henry: You mean the love affair with the 20-year-old negress?
Karl: Yeah.
Henry: I guess I told you about her when I was under the influence of a few beers.
Karl: You were drunk, man, plenty drunk.
Henry: (Pouring wine all around, draining his glass) Well, she was only 20, and she was black, and she was the one who was frightened, not the whites but the blacks who would condone her for her act. Actually, and without being conceited, I think she cared, but not enough. None of them care enough—black or white.
Karl: You’ve had more damned affairs than a man of your age deserves.
Henry: Hold it, daddy, I’m 40, but I’m dying. You want some laughs?
Karl: I’d rather have a Hollywood script.
Henry: Well, this isn’t Hollywood, it’s life: for a short period, I was married to a semi-millionaire’s daughter and I dabbled in her so-called magazine literary. And here came these sexy poems: YOU HAVE RUINED MY VAGINA; TAKE ME, LOVER; YOU, SEDUCER. As poetry it was less than fair.
Karl: But as an opportunity, it held all sorts of overtones.
Henry: And undertones.
Karl: You arranged a meeting, a literary meeting.
Henry: And found a 32-year-old virgin, well-read in the classics, ready to die, admirer of my mind and body, beautiful legs and hungry as a goldfish unfed 3 days.
Karl: What a spot.
Henry: I asked her to marry me.
Karl: You?
Henry: Hell yes—I’ve been married before. And I was married then.
Karl: And?
Henry: She had some type of incurable disease, and although she carried a Blue Cross card or something, it ended up to nearly $100 a month to the medics. Was my love that strong? Shit yes: for horses.
Karl: Tell me some more, baby. I’ll work it into the script.
Henry: So women can go to hell, I’m going to get me a lamb like the old English sailors, or, yes, it was a sheep, or a nice young boy. Let me read you a letter I’m going to mail to this bitch today. Here goes, quote: “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. My meetings with you down here were both physical and spiritual revelation that came at a time when I was very close to a foreboding finality. I’ve had another affair since then—she was only 20, much too young—”
Karl: That was the colored girl.
Henry: Shut up. “—that was less rewarding. I suppose it’s thinking on this last affair, and Jane, and my X-wife, and some others, that shows me I’m simply a ladies’ man. I don’t know what’s wrong and I much less give a damn. I’ve still got music and the horse, a drive down the coast and rotten alcohol for my shredded-wheat stomach. I’ve still got words to do and I’ve still got my pride, I still have my pride, and as Shakey said, ‘I still have my death to do.’”
Karl: You’re killing me, kid, but go on, round it off.
Henry: “And I can do without petticoats whether they be 20 or 40 or 60, rich or poor, sexy or cold, whether they live in Denver or Bermuda, East Kansas City or London, whether in the fog or the rain or the 9am sunlight—”
Karl: You’re rolling daddy, hit it!
Henry: “Whether with cats on their laps or black boyfriends, whether letter-writers or screamers of arias, whether tall or short or pregnant, whether nun or nude or whether with breasts or without, whether resplendent with jewels and the image of love or whether wrinkled and grey and forgotten, whether riding places on oceanic steamers or shucking in a cow through the gate, whether ugly or beautiful, whether living or dead, rich or poor, the hags, the whores, the mirrors of my heart, may they all be damned and without
yours,
Henry Knapp.”
Karl: Don’t you think that’s rather cruel? To a dying person? For $100 a month.
Henry: It certainly is, and that’s just what happens when the words carry you and you forget the human side. Writers are all bastards, trying to knock off each other or some editor, or they, like I, throw dirt on the dying. I hate my guts.
Karl: Some others do too. They tell me that J. Karlton Thrumbro thinks your stuff stinks. What have you got to say to this, Mr. Knapp?
Henry: