Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales

by Mark O'Donnell

  After his stinging rejection, from that day to this, the moon has had phases, and you certainly must be able to sympathize with that.

  THE ART OF FICTITIOUSNESS

  AN INTERVIEW WITH SAMUEL BECKETT

  Samuel Beckett, born in Dublin in 1906 and a resident of Paris since 1937, is the author of the trilogy of novels Molloy, Malone Meurt, and L’Innomable, and the plays En Attendant Godot, Fin de Partie (Endgame), Happy Days (not the television series), and numerous others. The one you’ve read, Waiting for Godot, was staged in America with Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

  It must be said that Beckett looks all of his eighty years, and during our interview progressed from a kind of charged, essential silence into a state of sullen resentfulness, and finally, of despair. He wore a worn dressing gown throughout our conversation at his Paris flat, although on several occasions he did attempt to get dressed. There were no refreshments served, not even coffee.

  Beckett: Qui est là?

  Interviewer: Candygram!

  Beckett: Qu’est-ce que c’est?

  Interviewer: You don’t have to speak in French, Mr. Beckett. I’m an American.

  Beckett: I didn’t order any candy.

  Interviewer: And you aren’t getting any. Excuse me, it was drafty out in the corridor. Shall we sit down?

  Beckett: I don’t understand.

  Interviewer: SHALL I SPEAK MORE LOUDLY?

  Beckett: I don’t understand what you’re doing here.

  Interviewer: I’d say I’m a fan of your writing, but given its blasted-beyond-frippery starkness, that would be fatuous. I’d say I was a devotee except that sounds like I’d commit murder if you asked me to. Speaking of stark, this isn’t the most upholstered chair I ever sat in.

  Beckett: I’m very tired, and I’m not feeling well.

  Interviewer: May I observe something? You sound like one of your characters.

  Beckett: I will not be interviewed against my will.

  Interviewer: You’re crusty, Mr. Beckett, you’re a regular character. I’m Irish, too, you know. Well, Irish American. Anyway, my dad’s dad was Irish. My mother’s family came from Yugoslavia. With my red hair everyone thinks I’m Irish, though, even though in the summer it’s more blond. Once this bum on the street who was drunk called me a Nazi rat. In a way it’s not a compliment but I figured he thought I was blond.

  Beckett: This cannot continue.

  Interviewer: See, there you go again! It sounds like something out of that play where they’re buried up to their necks in—wait a second, I guess it’s just one woman. There’s one with urns where they’re stuck in urns and they do the whole play twice and you mention Lipton tea, I figure you get a big kickback from Lipton every time they do that one, huh? I’m a playwright, too, I get obscure prizes too, and like you, I’m too far out for Broadway or movie deals. I had one play that was optioned for the movies but you can imagine how that turned out. You know all about mortal misery, huh?

  Beckett: I’m discovering more all the time.

  Interviewer: See, you’re worried that I’m some crazy student who has to write a thesis on you and wants to get some tidbit out of you he can milk into a stack of articles, and I don’t. You probably secretly laugh at everyone who tries to analyze your stuff for meaning, and don’t worry, I’m not going to do that. I don’t even think Godot is God; I think he’s anything that will provide an answer. Quick, yes or no?

  Beckett: I can’t oblige you, I have to see my doctor this morning.

  Interviewer: Oh, Sam, stop fishing, you look fine! May I call you Sam? I could call you Mister Beckett. Or Samuel. You know the old joke about the kid who says his name is Sam and the teacher says, What’s the rest of it? and he says, Mule. Sam-mule, get it? An American kind of joke, I guess.

  Beckett: I have to see my doctor, you can’t stay.

  Interviewer: You have to get over this shyness, Mister Beckett, if as an impartial observer I can just offer my un-phony opinion. But maybe you like to surround yourself with flatterers, I don’t know.

  Beckett: Don’t you understand? I’m not feeling well.

  Interviewer: Okay, I’ll play along. You look fine, Mister Beckett, just fine! You know that joke about there being three stages of life, Youth, Middle Age, and Gee You Look Good?

  Beckett: I’ll call the concierge.

  Interviewer: I can always talk to him later, but I thought I’d talk to you first and then get what everyone really thinks of you behind your back after that. Though some coffee would be nice. Does the concierge serve coffee? We don’t have servants in America, or I don’t, at least, not that I begrudge you yours. At your age I think you’re entitled to some kind of help. What are you, like eighty-something?

  Beckett: Please stop.

  Interviewer: I keep forgetting about that show business ego of yours. Believe me, I’m on your side. You’re a survivor, and that rates any kind of didoes you want to pull, in my book. Oh, oops, sorry, this vase, you shouldn’t have put—

  Beckett: It’s nothing, forget it, please go.

  Interviewer: Ow, I cut myself on one of the pieces!

  Beckett: I’ll call the housekeeper.

  Interviewer: No, it isn’t really cut. I thought it was, but … it’s not.

  Beckett: Are you all right?

  Interviewer: Now, let’s not get this turned around! I’m asking the questions. It’s my interview of you, after all. What does it matter if I’m all right? Let’s leave me out of this! You’re the man of the hour here. I’ve always wanted to interview you, I pitched you at the last magazine I worked for, Tiger Beat; I don’t know if you’re familiar with it?

  Beckett: No.

  Interviewer: They had never even heard of you, can you tie that? My editor-in-chief says to me, “You mean like a Whatever Happened To on that cute kid?” And I said to him, “Cute kid? Do you know what Samuel Beckett looks like?” Turns out he was thinking of Scotty Beckett! Do you know who that is?

  Beckett: No.

  Interviewer: Scotty Beckett was a child actor of the thirties and forties. He was in “Our Gang” for a while and he played the young Jolson in The Jolson Story. Everybody is always saying Larry Parks, Larry Parks whenever they talk about The Jolson Story, and they forget that Scotty Beckett is in it, too, at the beginning. And there’s Thomas à Becket, too. They did a play about him. That must confuse some people.

  Beckett: I beg of you, it’s so early—

  Interviewer: Yes, what’s this myth about writers working in the morning? I came early to make sure I caught you, but it is a little disillusioning to find you in your nightgown, though if you really are as old as you say you must need a lot of rest. Don’t think I’m criticizing, believe me, nobody likes your writing more than I do. We even did Waiting for Godot in my high school. Except our drama teacher said, No way, that we’d do You Can’t Take It With You again, and I had had just about enough, so we formed this little splinter group to do wild stuff our drama teacher wouldn’t like. The problem was nobody else understood it, even the actors I got to do it, plus since we were unofficial we couldn’t advertise or have a budget, so it kind of petered out, even though we did do it eventually, except again, the audience was all people who were willing to stay after school to see it, whereas with You Can’t Take It With You everyone got out of class so of course they liked it. And this one kid who’s now a lawyer didn’t even memorize his lines, I could have killed him, reading his lines out of the book while we were doing it, and today he makes more than us playwrights. I played Lucky, which is modest since it’s a small part, but since I was also directing I wanted to keep my distance on it to make sure it was all kept stark and yet like vaudeville. I still remember the long speech of Lucky’s, which is a tribute to you as a poet because when I recited it at home everyone thought it was gibberish. Here, I’ll show you: Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattman of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time witho
ut extension who from the heights of divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown.

  Beckett: Stop, please, stop!

  Interviewer: Oh, are you playing Vladimir? Don’t jump the gun yet. —fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm

  Beckett: Please, I do know the speech, after all!

  Interviewer: guess it can be embarrassing to hear things you wrote thirty-five years ago read out loud. I used to write poems about the elves and fairies dancing around toadstools when I was in elementary school and if someone dragged them out now I would have a cow! Anyway, in addition to directing and playing Lucky I also made the poster, which was very stark, all lower case letters, except the Magic Marker smeared but we pretended it stood for the messiness of human suffering. Our drama teacher rolled his eyes and said at least he understood You Can’t Take It With You and then he did it with two white kids playing Donald and Rheba and at the point where they’re supposed to say, “Ever notice how white folks always getting themselves in trouble?” he had them say, “Ever notice how city folks always getting themselves in trouble?” They were supposed to be hillbillies. We did Twelve Angry Women, too, because there weren’t enough boys interested in drama, they all said it was fruity. Is that a problem for you?

  Beckett: I can’t believe this is happening.

  Interviewer: Interesting. Like your characters, you have a terror of reality.

  Beckett: In this case.

  Interviewer: You’ve written several novels, too. What are they like?

  Beckett: I’m calling the police.

  Interviewer: Careful, the cassette recorder isn’t mine, I borrowed it!

  Beckett: (He does not speak.)

  Interviewer: You knew James Joyce. You did his typing and mail, I guess. Is there a simple explanation for Finnegans Wake, for people who know Joyce is great, but still? Remember, simple.

  Beckett: (He does not speak.)

  Interviewer: You’re shaking a little. Shall I stand up and let you sit down?

  Beckett: I can’t go on like this.

  Interviewer: “That’s what you think!” Your writing is very apt, it’s fun to quote.

  Beckett: Please go.

  Interviewer: You want me to go?

  Beckett: Yes, please go.

  Interviewer: (He does not move.)

  OVERHEARD WHILE WALKING

  FRAGMENTS OF THE PERAMBULATION

  “It was many, many years ago, at Lake Tahoe” … “I’m inhibited?!” … “Your English is improving! How much do you study?” “Two days an hour” … “But Daddy doesn’t know if Michael Jackson is happy” … “Not a socialist—a socialite” … “Honestly, a billion isn’t as much as it sounds” … “The Guggenheim does look like a collapsible camp cup” … “You got homeboys uptown, you got homeboys downtown, you don’t need me!” … “Spare change? I’m trying to buy a condo” … “Is that the sun or the moon on your T-shirt?” … “I read about them in Psychology Today” … “An iguana? It just looks like a big old lizard to me!” … “I give up, why would you rather live on Mars than on Venus?” … “And I say to you, Einstein could not have gone to heaven, because he died an agnostic!” … “The Empire State Building is so tall, it actually foreshortens itself” … “Her parents are never supposed to find out he’s a member of the Racquet Club” … “It is the fifty dollars, isn’t it?” … “I have to go see my mother tonight.” “Oh, what is she in?” … “Don’t tell me what to do, you’re not my pimp!” … “No, no—Betty is the dog” … “Did whoever wrote the ‘Internationale’ make any money off it?” … “I’m waiting for crack in a spreadable form” … “Ya, I haff been riding the subway all week, I feel very homely on it” … “I’m a normal person, I’m a normal person, I’m a normal person” … “It wasn’t so long ago you would have said Ralph Lauren was yucky” … “Hey! Hey! You with the tie! Show me your résumé!” … “But Dalton is so glitzy” … “I should never have told the judges my cat tried to have sex with me” … “Call me the following fall, then” … “Look! ‘Hot’ Coffee! Why is hot in quotation marks?” … “There’s someone who I know who I wish was dead” … “That’s right, sweetie: can-ta-loupe!” … “I think of myself as an executive who happens to swim” … “She found she made twice as much in tips if she wore a blond wig” … “Hey, Rambo—shut up!” … “There isn’t any Light Bulb District” … “It’s just Squeeze, not the Squeeze” … “And they misspelled jackals” … “That kind of nudity is so insecure” … “It just sort of steamrolled, avalanched—what’s the word? Snowballed” … “No, just the opposite, performance artists are people who can’t sing, dance, or act” … “ ‘Only the Best in Quality Spankography’—well, that’s a refreshing break from that anything-for-a-buck stuff” … “I can hear you women saying, ‘Oh, I can’t go to church, I don’t have any skirts, all I have are pantsuits!’ Well, I have some news for you ladies—you can get a skirt! It’s not so hard to get a skirt!” … “Its full name is Liberty Enlightening the World. We rode the subway right under it!” … “First of all, define ‘history’ ” … “Hey, babe, what’s your name? And where are we going?”

  THE WHOM OF KABOOM

  OR WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SHARK

  For some reason, the Whom of Kaboom and his entourage came to our town. I guess they thought a failing waterfront would be fun. Anyway, he brought his yacht and invited Easel “Jack” Kovach to go on a cruise with him. He’s that artist who did the infamous Venus de Mylar in front of City Hall. You know—that thing you have to walk all the way around to get past. Why a celebrity like Jack the Hipper should live in this dump, I don’t know, but I once heard him say on the news he did it as a joke. When the Whom invited him Easel asked if he could bring a dozen friends, thinking that was a joke, too, so imagine his concealed surprise when the Whom instantly agreed.

  The problem was, Easel had just published his tell-all autobiography, and now he didn’t have a dozen friends. So, he invited a dozen people at random out of the phone book. It was supposed to be conceptual art, and even the Whom could appreciate the publicity that comes from charity. Anyway, I was invited, and so were some people you wouldn’t want to meet. One you wouldn’t mind meeting, but one you wouldn’t remember meeting, was a little old lady named Reedy Wetwagon. She had never harmed anyone in her life, and to make sure, she never married or raised children. She was not only the most harmless but the oldest person on board, because the Whom may look dissipated, but he’s youngish, and he likes a young staff, and even the yacht’s captain was on his first command. Reedy didn’t quite understand why she’d been invited, and I didn’t either until my wife pointed out it was a joke, it was to mock me. Still, I decided to go on the cruise for the experience. And there was the possibility it might somehow be glamorous fun.

  We set sail through a forest of flashbulbs. I was introduced to the Whom very briefly, but it was obvious we wouldn’t spend any time with him or Easel Kovach. His assistant shook my hand for him, and the Whom asked me if I liked the skyline, but all I could think to say was that the new buildings looked like stacks of silver quarters. He smiled a little, and said that to him they looked like those peaked horns you see on demonic idols. That was the last I saw of him until the shark appeared.

  The skyline, evil or not, soon disappeared from the horizon, and the caterers opened a perpetual buffet. The other random guests and I pretty much stationed ourselves there, except Reedy Wetwagon, who sat at the back of the dining room. She kept waiting for everyone to sit down, so she could fill her plate without jostling anyone, but the catering staff had to stand at the table at all times, and she didn’t want to jostle them either, so she went unfed.

  Meanwhile, according to our steward, the whole trip was a business expense. The Whom and Easel were having even more exceptional food in the Whom’s cabin, where he was outlining a proposal to have Easel design a skyscraper in the shape of Kaboom itself. This would not have
been easy, because I’ve seen Kaboom on the map and its borders are very ragged. The building, and Easel’s fee, would have been colossal. Hundreds of rotating searchlights aimed in every direction would have been built into it, like X-ray eyes trying to see what was in the safe, or even where the safe was, and the traditional music of Kaboom would have been broadcast from hundreds of speakers at all times. The Whom said it was time our town knew what Kaboom sounded like. It sounds impressive, and I suppose there were a few janitorial jobs in it, but I still feel it was to make fun of our town. If it had been built, I don’t suppose anyone here would ever have gotten any sleep again. Anyway, the steward said Easel seemed willing enough but admitted he was no architect, and pointed out that anything he designed might collapse or at least not support furniture or people. The Whom said it didn’t have to, that the whole skyscraper could be hollow, no one would need to go inside it. It sounds more like a statue, but I wasn’t there, so I don’t grasp the fine points.

  Just as the steward was telling us this gossip, a great storm arose, and the yacht was tossed in the mad maternal arms of the sea. The buffet table overturned and that started a panic. We heard a strange roar and we all ran out on deck. There in the water was the world’s largest shark, and it began to demand a human sacrifice. I don’t know what was more impressive, its enormous size, or that deep voice, but in the dementia of the storm it all seemed inevitable and natural. Apparently celebrities are attracted to each other, and when the Whom finally appeared on the upper deck, he shouted that he knew this shark. I guess they had met somewhere. He shook his combination scepter-phone at it and officially damned it, but he seemed to have no immediate power over it.

  The dead-eyed fish kept on demanding a human sacrifice, as if it were responsible for the storm and could still the waters once it was fed. The Whom went back into his cabin, which I don’t think he should have done, but at the time we assumed he was fetching a harpoon. The danger didn’t seem to register with Easel, either, because he started taking photos of the shark. I guess they might have been for the police later, but I doubt you would have trouble picking it in a lineup. Unluckily for Reedy, the crew and most of the passengers were superstitious under their clean clothes, and crisis does bring out the craven and primitive. The captain, who really was too young, said in a jittery voice that it was a Jonah situation, and he called for straws to be drawn to see who would be thrown overboard. There were no straws on board, since this was a high-tech kind of yacht, so swizzle sticks were passed around, on the understanding that whoever got the least fancy one was to be God’s choice for Jonah. As it happened, and I had my eyes closed the whole time, the old lady got the plainest swizzle stick, one with just a spherical knob at the end. Obviously, someone had to give it to her, but all I knew was that I had gotten one with a tiny pagoda that had pink elephants waving from its tiers, so I was safe.