It was his salon for another reason also. He was the one essential ingredient in the circle: he was the audience.
All of the other participants considered themselves literary people and each of them was convinced that, while he was indispensable, any of the others could be easily replaced. But each felt the absolute need for an audience, and the MWL was the best listener any of them knew and the only listener in the group. As the unique element in the little circle they were happy to permit him to host the salon's gatherings and arbitrate arguments.
Besides the MWL there were three regulars at these every-other-Sunday-on-the-grass-soirees: Anatole Sweet, who was employed as a reader for the Encyclopedia of Encyclopedias, Harry Byrne-North, who was the editor of the Journal of Astrological Computing, and Sidney Ardrup, who was the bibliographer and indexer for Bawdy, Grab and Reach, publishers of Recreational and Institutional Pornography.
These lazy Sunday soirees followed a routine almost as fixed as the paths in the park where they took place. They began with a ritual that had been discovered accidentally one day during an argument over terse monologues in children's stories. It was the ritual of quote making.
The group filtered into the park from different directions and leisurely drifted together at ten o'clock in the morning. By two minutes after ten they were locked into a frantic competition to see who could invent the most quotable quote. It was a struggle to see who could use the fewest words to capture the most sense. Because each of them valued words slightly more than they loved the sense that words made, each of them struggled terribly, furiously shoving words in the direction of sense until by eight minutes after ten, they collectively collapsed exhausted into desperate silence.
It was supposed to be spontaneous but of course, they cheated. Each spent the two weeks between their meetings polishing their adverbs and pronouns and getting their phrasing just right. And they often fought over who was going to give the spontaneous aphorism he had been working on for two weeks first crack at the virginal Sunday.
When he caught the spirit of the game, the MWL would urge them on, reminding them of heights they had reached on past Sunday mornings. "Remember when Anatole said, 'Pride goeth before a fall and passion after a spring'", or "not quite up to a few weeks ago, Sidney, remember, you said, 'Even truth can leave you unprepared for reality and feeling that you have been deceived,'" or, "not bad Harry, but you going to have a hard time beating, 'The best things in life may be free but the store is always out of them and they spoil when you take them out of the box and you can't claim them as dependents on you tax returns whereas, the worst things in life cost ferociously but are available on easy credit and are childlike and cling and never grow up,' which was your contribution a month ago."
The Man with the Ladder took his job of playing Boswell to the three Johnsons seriously. Sometimes it was a bit heavier a load than he would have liked. Once during these impromptu sessions he thought to himself, "When the light comes on it's wonderful but sometimes you yearn for the darkness again." He never said anything out loud though.
After the ritual quote making they rested before turning to what they understood to be the real business of the salon. These lazy Sunday mornings were devoted to literary arguments. They would have dense little intellectual scuffles about which contemporary writer managed secondary plot components better. Or they would argue endlessly about which modern author deployed adverbs of motion best. And sometimes there were fierce debates over which of their peers more effectively controlled the appearance of words on the top of the page.
During these arguments the Man with the Ladder played the attentive spectator. At the end of these debates he was always called upon to decide who had made the better argument. The losers would sulk for a little while until the winner offered to buy everyone lunch as compensation.
There were mornings, however, when the routines and rituals fell away, when something mythical touched them and they would magically and effortless be transformed into the Paul Bunyon Literary Society competing with one another to tell the tallest literary tale. They squared off against one another for what they called the 'Maximum Spinners' award. The prize that went with this award was the obligation to buy something special to eat, usually Viennese pastries from the patisserie on 6th Avenue. It was a obligation mightily striven for.
At one of the earlier meetings they had established criteria for an acceptable tall tale: it had to concern some literary event and it had to appear factual. Exaggeration was permitted but within narrow but ambiguous constraints, and the MWL was often called to umpire whether a particular tale had taken excessive liberties with the real world.
Whenever he thought about these soirees, one particular Sunday stood out in the MWL's mind. This Sunday was unusual for two reasons. Not only had the decision to become the Paul Bunyan Society been unanimous and almost instantaneous, but everyone waited politely for someone else to begin the days telling."
Sidney finally threw put down the black notebook he always carried. "I'll start", he said almost reluctantly, his eyes following a sixteen year old in a very short skirt closely as she passed the bench on a skateboard.
"There was this writer I knew. I'll call him...," he momentarily agonized over a pseudonym, "Bill.
"You might have heard about him although I think his name was better known on the West coast then in the east. He was the young and fresh literary phenomenon of the year, for a few months, a while back. He didn't burst on the literary scene. The curtain of fame just parted slightly for him and he was squirted on the stage. He won 4 literary prizes in the same 6 month period. Very few people knew the real story behind his accomplishment. I'm not saying I'm the only one, although I think I'm the only one he told all of the details to.
"He had been writing for about 6 years and had finally finished half a novel. He thought it was pretty good. Because he was young and not sure of himself, he sent the half of the novel he had completed to his agent for criticism and approval. He also wanted the agent to tell him whether he should finish it."
Everyone in the circle snickered.
"I said he was young," Sidney added quickly."This agent had lived for a long time in New York, but on an impulse he had followed a starlet to Hollywood, so it was there that the half of the novel was sent. Now the agent received it, read it and surprisingly loved it. He wired the novelist back. 'Wonderful first half,' the cable read, 'finish it quickly. Will guarantee publisher if second half as good as first half.'
"When the budding novelist received this communication he was thrilled. He telegraphed the agent back quickly. 'You have only copy of first half of novel. Return it and I will finish it quickly and we will be famous and rich.'
"I'm sure you want to know why he hadn't made another copy of the manuscript." Everyone knew, but waited to be told anyway. "He didn't have the money. On the day he was ready to send out the manuscript, he had a hard choice, and he choose to eat and threw himself on the mercy of the muses, who decided to let him swing in the wind because he imposed on them with a full stomach.
"What he got back was not the first half of his novel but another telegram from his agent saying. 'Gave first half to film producer for first reading. Producer notorious for taking time to consider possible scripts. Rewrite first half from memory and add second half.'
"Well, the writer thought this a little presumptuous, but he took it as a complement as well. And he did just as he was told.
"He rewrote the first half of the novel from memory, and, in a month, he finished it, by adding a second half. He sent it off feeling clever, professional and a little lucky.
"Now you'd think that experience would have taught him a lesson and that he would make a copy of the novel he had just completed, which was after all, the result of a considerable amount of labor, not all of it of love. You're right, of course. What is more, he picked what he thought was the safest repository for that manuscript. He left it in the hands of his girl friend." Everyone sat there waiting for things to turn out badly.
"But his working so hard and long on this novel had alienated her affections. She felt she had been beaten out by something as mere as a work of literature. She lost her self respect and with her self respect went any respect she felt for him. This explains the otherwise incomprehensible the fact that she trashed the novel, threw it down the incinerator and took off, with a plumber, for Spain. She sent him a card from there, telling him where he could find the ashes of his novel, and what he could do with them. He was nearly broken by the twin losses but while one merely broke his heart, the other broke the strings holding all of his other parts together.
"He was shattered, and he was terrified, and it was in desperate panic that he cabled his agent.
"'Did you receive manuscript of completed novel?' his message read, to which came the reply, 'Manuscript received, message will follow.' And it did. What it said was, 'New first half of novel not the same as old first half of novel. Second part of new novel does not match old first half. I am returning old first half. Rewrite second half. Producer felt it was weak in central theme: he will reconsider complete novel. Finish fast!'
"Now when Bill received the old first half of his novel he recognized that what his agent had said was true. He had changed the first half of the novel drastically, and the ending he had written to complete what his memory told him was the first half of his novel just did not fit the old first half. It was a shock to him to see how radically his memory had altered what he thought was so much a living part of him.
"But with the old first half of his novel in hand, he proceeded to redo the job he believed he had already finished. He rewrote the ending of the novel and sent the old first part and the new second part off to his agent. When he thought about what he had done it dawned on him that he had two novels which like the children of two sets of circumstances bore no relationship to one another at all.
"Now the next cable our hero received was from Switzerland where his vacationing agent had received a call from one of the publishers to whom he had sent the manuscript 'Publisher loved the novel', the telegram to our author read. 'Was absolutely caught up with character of opera singer whose voice changes in middle years. Insists she be made a major character and theme of sea change be developed. Assurances will publish novel. Am off on Safari. Send completed manuscript to Hollywood address.'
"Now the author remembered no such character. He reread his copy of the masterwork and the closest thing he could find was a discussion at the end of the second chapter in which the villain is talking about a movie he saw in which an opera singer changes her sex and after a violent struggle with the impresario, her former lover, wins the tenor's role.
"At this point, as you might suppose, the author was thoroughly discouraged. He was ready to turn his back on the whole business, but his hunger for fame and glory and food restrained him. He made what he believed was a minor revision in his novel to make a central place for an opera star making a deep water dive, as he put it. Of course you know what happened." The two other literary people nodded knowingly, but the MWL held his breath.
"Even the greatest of novelists has limitations." Everyone sighed. "Although in his own mind he had merely introduced a minor twist on the path from where he thought the novel began to where he knew it ended he had produced another novel, entirely different from the two preceding it. On the day he sent it out to his agents Hollywood address he received another cable.
"'Publisher who planned to publish book massacred editor and chief reader and shot self and mistress. Have shown it to new publisher who handles mostly religious books but is looking to branch out and expand catalogue. Guarantees will publish it if introduce religious theme and cut out all references to sex of any kind except with, or between, or involving in any form of animals. Sending advance for anticipated revision'" and the cable stopped and began again with some money. It ended with the sentence 'Am off on Safari again. Send manuscript to Hollywood address.'
"Now, as I said the young writer was hungry, physically as well as spiritually. He determined to refuse to continue a situation he believed had become a gross and bloated farce. Before the determination could take root however, he spent the money and felt compelled to deliver a novel in which a religious theme was developed and any sex except with or between or involving animals was excluded.
"He was angry and confused and felt betrayed by his own talent. He contemplated suicide and rejected it. He began to hallucinate periodically that he been transformed into a weird beast that was a cross between a chimera and a sphinx with a penis as big and as crooked as the Nile. His being was tortured by the need for relief which, in his fantasies, took the shape of a bizarre creature with a gold embossed spline for a sexual organ and breasts made of end papers."
"It was in this condition, tottering on the precipice of a breakdown that he finished a revision of his novel with a religious theme and all references to sex cut out except with, or between, or involving animals. The process of mailing it healed him and he immediately forgot he had written it.
"Unfortunately, at the moment he was pushing the manuscript through the little slot in the post office, his agent was dying a very interesting death in Bologna, dressed as a bull elephant, in a brothel called 'Safari.'
"The next cable he received was from the executor of the agents will. It said tersely, 'Am returning under separate cover a collection of manuscripts with your name on them.'"
Everyone waited for the denouement. "He never received them," Sidney responded after a reasonably dramatic pause. "Instead, he got in the mail a package of letters addressed to him but intended for someone else. A note was enclosed that was addressed to the chief editor of one of the major publishing houses in the city. It read as follows 'I am enclosing a set of letters you have authored over the years. I return them to you with regret since they are the hottest thing I have read in a long time and excellent prose to boot, but it was Morris's dying request.' (Morris was the agent`s name). And in fact that was a good description of them. They were first quality, literate, torrid love letters. Confused and uncertain about what to do, Bill stuffed them in a drawer and began answering advertising agencies want ads for copy writers.
"Shortly after this he received a letter from the editor whose letters were mistakenly addressed to him. I'll ignore the details and get to the meat of the matter," Sidney commented. "'I received a package obviously intended for you but mistakenly sent to me,' the letter said. 'I took the liberty of reading the manuscripts that were enclosed therein. I wonder whether you could be willing to discuss their publication by H.R. and Davis, publishers. They are wonderful and I am sure we can work out a contract for all four manuscripts.'
"There was a P.S.. 'I was wondering if by any chance you received a package which should have been addressed to me. If so, we could work out a mutual exchange at an agreed upon spot in the Bronx.' A P.P.S assured Bill that something would be worked out by way of publishing the four novels and that he should not call her at the office and certainly not at home and she would contact him."
"I swear to you it's a true story. The novels were all published and they won the prizes they so richly deserved. Bill denies the story, preferring the explanation that he succeeded because of brains, personality and creativity."
Not everybody was entirely pleased with the story, although the Man with the Ladder thought it was wonderful.
"That's not bad," commented Harry Byrne-North. "Not bad at all. Only it seems to me to be a little ornate for a piece of fact. I'll tell you a simple story about a man who, a few years ago, won the Pierpont-Norton fellowship, you know the one that pays you a stipend for the rest of your life as long as you publish anything you write under the pseudonym Pierpont-Norton. His name was Jim before the award changed it.
"The person I'm talking about wasn't always a writer. He had been trained as a classical musician. His instrument was the piccolo and for years he shared the first chair at the Philharmonic.
"In the middle of a furious passage of a piccolo solo in the Bandit Suite by Stuckert he had a vision. A virgin came to him in the form of an arpeggio and told him to trade his piccolo in for a typewriter. He took his visions seriously and did as he was told.
"Now it was a strange thing. Although he changed his medium he retained his old habits. He would start the day practicing. He would do the equivalent of scales for about an hour or two before he settled down to what he considered his serious writing. I think," Harry Byrne-North commented, "the form this exercise took was the most interesting thing about his writing."
"In college he had taken a creative writing course. The term project for the course was a short story. His teacher thought the one he submitted prosaic and dull and gave him C+. What he would do every day is take that story, and for practice, rewrite it."
"The same story?" the MWL asked.
"The same story. He put in plastic covers so that he wouldn't smudge it, and each day, before he settled down to his serious writing, he would reread his old college assignment and produce a new story. Then, after he finished his scales so to speak, he would turn over the pages he had just filled with practice writing and settle down to the serious job of writing his great, universal novel.
"When he finished his masterpiece he made 10 copies and sent them out to the first ten names on a list of possible publishers he had copied from the Writers Digest."
"Now he was as poor as any of us, poorer. He had no steady job. He gave Piccolo lessons when he could find a student, which was rarely. Making the ten copies had broken his bank. And having sent out all the copies he could afford to make, he waited. He didn't wait long. When the first four rejection notices came, he sent the four returned manuscripts to four publishers lower down on his list.
"As the rejection notices came back, he became more and more discouraged. I met him about this time, in this park actually, over there. He pointed to the entrance of the park where the sixteen year old had been transported on her skateboard. We fell into this conversation about literary things and piccolos.
"He asked my advice and I gave it to him freely. At the time a friend of mine had just signed on with a new publishing company that was angling to be taken over by an oil company. They were expecting a glut of greasy capital which they could turn to literary productions. Send him your manuscript, was my advice.
"'I wish I could', he said, dejectedly, 'but I've used up all my cash. I haven't the money to make another copy.'"
"Now at the time I was rather strapped myself so I couldn't help him that way. But since he had ten copies circulating and they were coming back as fast as he could send them out, I couldn't see that parting with the original would hurt him at all. 'Send him the original,' I suggested. 'He's very responsible and I guarantee you that there's no chance he will lose or misplace it.' He took my advice."
Harry waited.
"Well, did they like the novel?" the MWL asked quietly.
"That's a good question. A strange thing happened. My friend at the publishing house to whom the manuscript was addressed swears it was not his fault, but when the manuscript arrived at his office he opened it and put on his desk back side up."
"What do you mean back side up?" asked the Man with the Ladder.
"With the short stories facing up. all those exercises day after day, all those rewrites of the same story."
Harry Byrne_North waited a moment before he continued. "He loved it."
"Just who loved what?" asked the MWL
"The publisher loved the short stories. They sent the ex-piccolo player a contract which he signed without looking at it. He was furious when he found out they were publishing his exercises. He felt they were worthless five finger pieces."
"How about the novel?" someone asked. "Oh, they finally rejected it just as all of the other companies had rejected it. I never knew why, but he was completely demoralized by the turn of events and gave up writing altogether. When he won the prize no one could quite figure out where to send it to him. As far as I know the check was deposited in his account but it just sits there gathering interest."
Everyone sat there meditating on the fickleness and chancy character of success, and watching the 16 year old maneuver around a child who was having a tantrum in the middle of the path in front of them.
Anatole Sweet picked up the thread of the contest.
"Do you know the literary prixe the Yugoslav regime gives every five years?" Anatole began. Everyone acknowledged the prize, not because they had heard of it, but because such acknowledgment was expected of them. "As you know it's worth 50,000 dinars payable in Belgrade. It's an endowment of the king of the gypsies who wanted to be a writer before his brother died suddenly and he was promoted from relaxed court hanger on, to king."
"Well last year," Anatole continued, "my friend Baltcher won it."
"Never heard of Baltcher," Harry Byrne-North remarked caustically.
"Probably not," Anatole agreed pleasantly. "The only thing he ever wrote was the novel that won the prize. I'm going to tell you how he wrote that novel." Everyone settled back into a defensive listening posture.
"He was a Hungarian who left his native Rumania and washed up on the shores of America as a child of three."
Everyone snickered at the insiders joke and looked at the MWL to make sure he had gotten it, but he gave no indication that he had heard anything but a simple statement of fact.
"Baltcher was not really a writer. He worked in a library, but he was indifferent to books. His reading was confined mostly to magazines in which words appeared at the bottom of drawings or pictures.
"The only vaguely literary thing about him was his fascination with Shakespeare. His acquaintance with the Bard was limited to what he remembered from high school English, because after he graduated he gave up reading. He felt it unnecessarily burdened his existence. But the romance of Shakespeare inexplicably haunted him.
"As I said, he limited his reading severely. But working at the library has its occupational hazards like any other occupation. One day while he was taking a damaged bound volume of magazines up to the bindery to be repaired, it fell open, and almost in spite of himself, he started reading the mutilated page it had opened to.
"It was not a story but part of an essay. You know the fragment. It's that little scummage in which the author states that if you put a hundred monkeys in a room in front of a hundred typewriters and set them typing, in the long run they will produce all of Shakespeare."
"I never thought that was very complementary to Shakespeare," Harry commented. "It wouldn't be so easy to reproduce my works," he added self assuredly. Anatole ignored the interruption.
"Well, this little statement fascinated and intrigued Baltcher. It freed and bound him in the same moment. He said to himself, if monkeys can do it, why not me. It's the way inspiration comes to some people," Anatole remarked quietly, looking at Harry.
"What he understood the article to be saying was that the key to writing Shakespeare was a proper state of animated typing, and he believed that Shakespeare was related to monkeyness the way other authors might be related to tigerness or horseness, although he thought that put them up the creek since tigers and horses could not be as adept as monkeys at typing.
"His fascination with Shakespeare absorbed him. He wanted to write Shakespeare. The fact that Shakespeare was written already did not seem to bother him. The idea of copying Shakespeare from a book never entered his head. He wanted to sit at the typewriter and compose Shakespeare."
"That's dumb," Harry interjected. "The whole business is dumb. The example is an illustration of randomness," he added, wanting to display his grasp of science. It would require an infinite length of time to produce the collected works."
"You know that, and I know that," Anatole said smugly, "but my friend did not. And he wouldn't have believed you anyway. Besides, I'm only reporting what happened," Anatole stated, and restarted his narrative abruptly.
"Baltchar quit his job at the library and bought himself a typewriter. He reduced his diet to peanuts and bananas. He strove with all of his being to put himself into what he felt was an extreme state of monkeyness, and began typing.
"For the first two months the only thing that came out was a jumble of letters. Sometimes they filled a whole page without a space. Other days only four letter sequences appeared. He was beginning to be discouraged when somewhere in the third month he started typing and what appeared on the page was a paragraph that began, `It was the best of time and it was the worst of times' and went on in that tone for pages and pages.
"When he stopped and looked over what he had written that day, he tried to decide whether it could be something of Shakespeare's that he might never had heard of. The only thing of Shakespeare's he knew for sure was a few snatches from the Sonnets and parts of a scene of two from Hamlet. He briefly entertained the thought of rereading Shakespeare but rejected the idea because he was afraid this would open him up to the charge of plagiarism when he finally started producing the master's works. He felt certain that paying close attention to what he was typing would be enough to permit him to recognize Shakespeare when he finally got around to writing him. He reread what he had just typed and decided tentatively that it was a false start, not Shakespeare. He was both discouraged and encouraged by this development.
"Over the next two months interesting things appeared at his typewriter. One long coherent run of pages began 'Well, prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates' and went on and on in that odd tone. He liked it but he decided it was not Shakespeare and he tried to shake it off. But when he sat down at the typewriter and resumed typing the words remained with the same tone and voice. Finally Baltcher gave up and rested for a few days until whatever it was, it went away.
"To say he was disappointed is to understate the case. He thought of giving up, but the anticipation of failure sickened him, so he went back to the typewriter with renewed determination. His conviction deepened that what was wrong was that he could not maintain himself in intimate contact with the essence of monkeyness for long enough.
"For a week or so after he resumed typing nothing came out but gibberish. Choppy sentences in what looked like some strange language. And then for four weeks another coherent manuscript appeared at his typewriter. It began 'I met Nick Strayte where you meet half of the faculty on campus if you wait long enough, in the bathroom.' Three hundred and twelve pages followed."
Because all of the rest of the salon was watching the girl on the skateboard negotiate a few tricky turns, no one noticed the MWL sit straight up and stare at Anatole, who, after shaking off the distraction, continued.
"He liked whatever it was but he had the nagging feeling it was not one of Shakespeare's plays. None of the scenes he remembered as definitely Shakespeare appeared in it. But he was not absolutely certain so he took it to someone he knew from the library who had read all of Shakespeare and this person confirmed what he had suspected all along. It was definitely not Shakespeare.
"He was depressed and demoralized. As far as he could see he was doing everything right. Yet Shakespeare remained obdurate and kept himself hidden. In the depths of that depression he came to the conclusion that either he was doing something wrong or that the author of the article in which he had read this technique had omitted something. He made up his mind that he would have to do something drastic if he was going to achieve his goal."
"What did he do?" asked the MWL with uncharacteristic anxiety.
Anatole smiled. "He went back to the magazine in which he had read the article and got the name of the author. It just so happened that the man who wrote the article was a famous literary critic I shall not name. Anatole wrote him a letter.
"'Dear Mr. it began. I read your article in The Bankers Quarterly. I have to report that it was not factual in particulars. I am enclosing an example of the kind of thing that comes out when I follow the procedure you outlined for producing Shakespeare. As you can see it is not Shakespeare. I have followed your technique for writing Shakespeare to the letter. What am I doing wrong? I await your response. Yours truly. Baltchar.'
"The way Baltchar tells it he got a letter back from this critic saying that he never read manuscripts that were sent to him but that the altogether quaint and curious letter introducing the manuscript had totally captured his attention and disarmed him. He said he thought that the novel was a work of genius and that, with Batchar's permission, he would submit it to a publisher he knew.
"I am not sure of the exact train of events that followed. The end result was that the manuscript was published in Europe and submitted for the King of the Gypsies prize, which it won."
"What about Baltchar?" the MWL asked
"Baltchar went to Yugoslavia and received his prize. The critic who was responsible for writing the article that started Baltchar's journey into literature sat him down and explained that the procedure he had written about was not a technique for producing Shakespeare but illustrated some consequences of random procedures. Baltchar came home and went back to working at the library. He married someone who was producing a concordance of children's stories. Very happy last I heard. Never wrote anything after his prize winning opus."
After a reasonable silence the three aspirants for the Maximum Spinner award turned to the MWL. "Well, who is the winner?" Arthur asked. They were surprised to see the MWL pale and struggling for breath.
"Is anything wrong?" Harry asked, speaking for all of the salon.
"No, of course not, a piece of dust in my throat I will be O.K. in a minute." The MWL recovered his composure quickly and picked up his role where he had set it down.
"Close as it is, because the stories were all wonderful, the Maximum Spinner today is Anatole."
"Can't accept," Anatole said, pretending to hand the invisible award back. "It's a true story. I just changed the facts to protect the innocent." Then, after a moment he relented. "O.K., I know when I've been had," he said with mock resentment, but brimming with pride. It's Danish all round," and he set off across the park with Harry and Sidney sulking behind him.
"I'll catch up in a minute," said the MWL fumbling with his perch. In his head he heard his own voice reading from a half finished manuscript that he would never complete. "'I met Nick Strayte where you meet half of the faculty on campus if you wait long enough, the bathroom. He was tall, standing away from the urinal with abandon. 'I've never seen you before, he said, at least the pecker isn't familiar.'"