by Paul Auster
2
1961. You can’t remember the month, but you believe it was sometime in the fall. You were fourteen. Adolescence had struck, childhood was well behind you now, and the social whirl that had so consumed you at eleven and twelve had lost its charm. You avoided going to dances and parties, and even though you were mad for girls, ever more involved in the pursuit of your erotic education, you no longer had any desire to fit in, you made a point of going your own way, and as far as the world was concerned, whether the small world of your New Jersey town or the large world of your country, you saw yourself as a contrarian, a person at odds with things-as-they-were. You were still wrapped up in playing sports (football, basketball, and baseball—with ever-increasing skill and intensity of purpose), but games were no longer the center of your life, and rock and roll was dead. The previous year, you had spent hundreds of hours listening to folk music, records by the Weavers and Woody Guthrie, attracted by the words of protest that ran through their songs, but by now you had begun to lose interest in those simple messages, you were moving on, dwelling for a season or two in the kingdom of jazz, and then, by fourteen, fourteen and a half, immersing yourself in classical music, Bach and Beethoven, Handel and Mozart, Schubert and Haydn, drawing sustenance from those composers in ways that wouldn’t have seemed possible just a year or two before, discovering the music that has continued to sustain you through all the years that have followed. You were reading more now as well, the barrier that had once stood between you and what you considered to be first-rank literature had fallen, and off you ran into that immense country that is still your home, beginning with twentieth-century Americans such as Hemingway, Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, and Salinger, but also meeting Kafka and Orwell for the first time that year, camping out with Voltaire’s Candide—which made you laugh harder than any book you had ever read—and shaking hands with Emily Dickinson and William Blake, and before long you would be booking passage to Russia, France, England, Ireland, and Germany, as well as working your way back into the American past. That was also the year when you read The Communist Manifesto for the first time—which was the year of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, the year of Eisenhower’s speech about the military-industrial complex, the year of Kennedy’s inauguration, the year of the Peace Corps and the Bay of Pigs, the year Alan Shepard became the first American to be launched into space, the year of the Berlin Wall. You were paying attention now, you had turned into a political creature with opinions and arguments and counterarguments, appalled by the nuclear arms race between America and the Soviet Union and therefore an ardent Ban the Bomb supporter, a young person avidly following every development of the civil rights movement, which all came down to a question of fairness for you, the undoing of ancient wrongs, the golden dream of living in a race-blind world. During the summer, the Freedom Riders traveling through the South on long-distance buses were beaten by mobs of white men, Hemingway committed suicide, and on a summer-camp outing in the woods of New York State, a boy in your group was struck and killed by lightning, the fourteen-year-old Ralph M., who was no more than a foot from you when the bolt shot down from the sky and electrocuted him, and although you have written about this event in some detail (Why Write?, story no. 3), you have never stopped thinking about what happened that day, it has continued to inform how you have looked at the world ever since, for that was your first lesson in the alchemy of chance, your introduction to the inhuman forces that can turn life into death in a single instant. Fourteen, the terrible age of fourteen, when you are still a prisoner of the circumstances you were born into and yet ready to leave them behind, when all you dream about is escape.
Among the films you saw that year were Judgment at Nuremberg, Two Rode Together, and The Hustler, all popular movies that made their way into the suburban theaters of Essex County, but for foreign films and older films one had to go to New York, which was about forty-five minutes away, and since it wasn’t until the next year, as a sophomore in high school, that you started cultivating the habit of slipping off to Manhattan whenever you could, your film education had not yet begun in earnest when you were fourteen. The only place where you could see old films was on television, a useful resource in its way, but the films broadcast on the local stations were often butchered to fit into prearranged schedules and always—maddeningly—interrupted by commercials. Still, there was one televised film series that did better than the others, a program called Million Dollar Movie, which aired on Channel 9 and showed one classic American film every day for an entire week, the same film three times a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once at night, which meant that you could watch the same film twenty-one times in a span of 168 hours—assuming you wished to do that. It was because of Million Dollar Movie that you were able to see I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, the next cinematic earthquake of your life, the next film that blasted in on you and altered the composition of your inner world, a 1932 Warner Brothers production directed by Mervyn LeRoy with Paul Muni (born Muni Weisenfreund) in the principal role, one of the darkest American films ever made, a story about injustice that shuns the Hollywood convention of hopeful or happy endings, and because you were fourteen and burning with indignation against the injustices of the world, you were ripe for this story, it came into your life at the precise moment you needed to see it, and therefore you watched it again the next day, and the day after that as well, and perhaps every single day until the week was done.2
The war is over. American soldiers are coming home from Europe, large ships are plowing through the icy waters of the Atlantic, steam whistles are blasting in celebration, and as the Sunset Division pulls into port, the deck is thronged with uniformed men, hundreds of soldiers gesturing wildly to the exuberant crowd that waits for them on shore. It is 1919, and the boys who sailed over there are landing back here, the armistice has been signed, the Great War is history, and down below, in the bowels of the ship, a gang of soon-to-be ex-soldiers is singing loudly while a small group plays craps on the floor. Money is being lost and won, the dice are clattering on the hard surface, and in steps the squad sergeant with an apologetic smile on his face, telling the boys to knock it off because the old man has ordered bunk inspection in an hour. A drawling Texan remarks that if anyone ever says the word inspection to him again, he will gladly plug him with his six-shooter, and moments after that the soldiers are talking about their postwar plans. The sergeant, a stocky and amiable fellow who has clearly won the respect of his men, says that he intends to get some kind of construction job, that working in the Engineering Corps has been a swell experience and he means to make the most of it. One of the soldiers says: We’ll be reading about you in the newspapers, I bet. Mr. James Allen is building a new Panama Canal—or something. To which Allen replies: You can bet your tin hat that Mr. James Allen won’t be back in the old factory.
It is 1919, but the film you are watching was made thirteen years later, which was no doubt the worst year of the Depression, and since you have learned a thing or two about American history by now, you know that just before the film was shot, in the spring and summer of 1932, the Bonus Army was camped out on the Anacostia Flats, in the southern part of Washington, D.C., a group of thirty thousand people, nearly all of them veterans of the war, who had descended on the capital in support of a bill sponsored by Congressman Wright Patman that proposed to allow veterans to cash in their one-thousand-dollar war-bonus certificates that year instead of having to wait until 1945, as the current law then stipulated, and with these desperate, unemployed men lingering month after month in their wretched camp of tents and cardboard shacks, they became an ever-growing embarrassment to the Hoover administration. The Patman bill was passed by the House but voted down by the Senate, which led to some small but angry battles between members of the Bonus Army and the local police, which in turn convinced Hoover that it was time to get rid of this horde of ragged, left-wing beggars, this legion of so-called Forgotten Men. He chose the United States Army to do the job for him, a g
rotesque political choice—commanding soldiers to use force on other soldiers, an irony so cruel that most of the country was revolted by the action—and it is curious to note that among the principal players in this drama were Douglas MacArthur, the army chief of staff, Major Dwight Eisenhower, MacArthur’s aide, and Major George Patton, the three men who went on to become the most widely known American generals of World War II. Against Eisenhower’s advice (I told that dumb son of a bitch that he had no business going down there), MacArthur took charge, instructing Patton to place a unit of tanks on the outskirts of the camp, and on July twenty-eighth, in full uniform, with every one of his many decorations displayed on his chest, he led the force that evicted the Bonus Army from its miserable shantytown, pushing out the interlopers at gunpoint as dozens of shacks burned to the ground. A little more than a hundred days after that, Hoover became a one-term president, voted out of office in Roosevelt’s landslide victory.
After the postwar parades with the marching bands and the giant American flags, the film cuts to a shot of a speeding train, and for several seconds it is unclear where the train is going, as if the locomotive charging along the tracks is no more than an abstract representation of time in motion, the abrupt and furious passage from Then to Now as the world of Now propels itself into the future. Forget the war. The war is over, and no matter how many died over there in muddy, blood-filled trenches, Now belongs only to the living.
Another cut, this time to the train station in a town called Lynndale, evidently a smallish spot on the map, a nondescript American somewhere, and standing on the platform are four people: a middle-aged woman in somber, conservative clothing, a pretty young blonde, a minister wearing a clerical collar, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a black hat, along with an older man in a suit and tie with a straw boater on his head. The middle-aged woman asks the blonde if she thinks he will be wearing his medal (one assumes that he refers to her son), and the girl responds, Why, of course he will, but a moment later the train comes to a halt and out steps Sergeant Allen, dressed in a standard civilian suit—no medal, no uniform, nothing to suggest he has just fought in a war. After a joyful, welcoming embrace from his mother, Allen shakes the girl’s hand, dispelling any notion that she might be his sister, girlfriend, or wife, saying that he never would have recognized her, and the girl, whose name is Alice, tactlessly replies that he looks different, too, adding that she misses his uniform, which made him look taller and more distinguished, thereby telling him that he has been reduced to the rank of nobody, no matter how many medals he might have won overseas. To make matters worse, the minister, who turns out to be Allen’s older brother, enthusiastically informs him that Mr. Parker, the gent in the straw boater, is going to take him back into the factory, and as Parker pumps Allen’s hand and slaps him on the back, he confirms that Allen’s job has indeed been saved for him. You’ve done your bit, and your boss isn’t going to forget you. All well and good, but after listening to Allen’s remarks on the ship, we already know that he has no intention of returning to his old job at the factory. The film has been running for approximately three minutes, and already you can see the cloud gathering around James Allen’s head.
A homecoming dinner at the old place, a stuffy, nineteenth-century house with cluttered interiors, Alice nowhere in sight, just the three members of the Allen family: weak-minded, indulgent Ma; prissy, sanctimonious brother Clint (a smooth-talking bore with the off-putting habit of folding his hands together while he speaks); and rough-and-tumble Allen, burning with ambition, ready to take on the world. Discord erupts within seconds. Clint mentions Mr. Parker’s kind and generous offer, and Allen immediately tells him that he doesn’t want the job. Both Ma and Older Brother are stunned. Laughing in response, Allen explains that the army has changed him, and he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life answering a factory whistle instead of a bugle call, he wants to do something worthwhile, and he can’t imagine himself being cooped up in a shipping room all day.
Nevertheless, not wanting to disappoint his mother, Allen reluctantly returns to his old job at the Parker Manufacturing Company, THE HOME OF KUMFORT SHOES, but his heart isn’t in it, his mind isn’t in it, and day after day he spends his lunch hour loitering around the construction site of a new bridge, often losing track of the time, often late in reporting back for the afternoon shift. His discontent finally spills out at another family dinner when his brother tells him how disappointed Mr. Parker is by his performance at work and Allen defends himself with an impassioned speech about wanting to make a new life for himself, telling Clint and his mother that the cramped and mechanical routine at the factory is even more stultifying than the army and that he needs to go somewhere, anywhere, where I can do what I want. In an abrupt turnaround, his mother relents, giving him her blessing to strike out on his own, and when Clint objects, she brushes off Reverend Pious with a simple, transparent declaration of maternal support, the anthem of all good mothers: He’s got to be happy, she says, he’s got to find himself.
According to Allen, construction jobs are available in New England, and a moment later a map is displayed on-screen, a map of New Jersey as it turns out (the same New Jersey in which you are watching the film), accompanied by the sound of a fast-moving train, another fast-moving train, and then the map dissolves into an image of that train, which in turn dissolves into another map, showing Connecticut … Rhode Island … and Boston.
Allen is alone in the cab of a heavy construction vehicle, sitting behind the wheel of what appears to be a large steam shovel—indicating that he has found the work he was looking for and all is right with the world. A man comes up to him, the foreman, the crew boss, the person in charge, and tells Allen to knock it off, he has some bad news for him. They’re cutting down, he says, and two men will have to go. Without expressing much concern or surprise, Allen hops off the machine and says, All right. You are impressed by how calmly he takes this setback, this arbitrary dismissal, booted out through no fault of his own, but Allen looks confident, still full of hope for the future, a man ready for anything.
Another map, this one beginning with Boston, then tracing the journey of a ship headed south, steaming down the Atlantic coast and into the Gulf of Mexico, where it finally stops at New Orleans.
Looking a little the worse for wear, clothes shabbier now, a two-day stubble of beard darkening his face, shoulders beginning to droop somewhat, Allen walks into a factory to apply for work. He has traveled north, he has traveled south, and after all those miles he is exactly where he started—or struggling to get back to where he started, for now he is unemployed, and he would gladly accept a job similar to the one he called stupid and insignificant after he came home from the war. Can you use a good man? he asks the boss, and the boss replies: Last week I could have used you, but I’m full up now. Allen shakes his head, bunches his right hand into a fist, and then softly, ever so softly, lowers that fist onto the table, not wanting to lose control of himself, not yet at the point of complete desperation, but that fist is a sign of rapidly diminishing hope, and when he turns around and walks away, he looks like a man who has run out of ideas.
Again the map, and again the sounds of the fast-moving train. Allen is on his way back north, zeroing in on the unlikely town of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
There he is, dressed in overalls and a work shirt, driving a logging truck down a road that cuts through a tall pine forest. Allen turns to the man sitting beside him and says he’s just filling in for a few days. Believe me, he continues, I’m glad to be working again. It’s my first job in a long time. Oshkosh is only a temporary reprieve, then, a deceptive pause that has bucked up Allen’s spirits for a little while, but it is clear now that no permanent jobs are to be found anywhere, that no matter how far Allen travels to look for one, he will always come up empty, and indeed, when the next map shows him on his way south again, moving toward St. Louis, with the sound of the locomotive belting forth its now-familiar melody, all has suddenly changed, for when the camera reveals the
source of that melody, Allen is not sitting in a crowded carriage with other passengers, the train he has taken turns out to be a freight train, and he is alone, sleeping on the floor of a boxcar. The optimistic war veteran who was going to make his mark building the next Panama Canal has turned into a vagabond who rides the rails, a penniless drifter, a forgotten man. Yes, the action is supposedly taking place in 1919, but in fact it is 1932, and you realize now that you are watching a story about the Great Depression, a story about what it means to live in a country without work.
Allen walks into a pawnshop holding something in his hand, an object too small to be seen. He looks like a bum now. Ragged clothes, unshaven face, a creased and dented hat. The proprietor asks him what he wants, and Allen opens his hand, showing him a military medal. How much can you give me for the Belgian Croix de Guerre? he asks, but rather than name a price, the proprietor gestures to Allen with his finger, beckoning him to have a look inside the glass case sitting on the counter. Allen looks, and what he sees are medals, dozens of medals similar to the one he is holding in his hand, scores of medals, too many medals to count, each one representing the hard-luck story of a future member of the Bonus Army, and without saying a word, Allen nods his head in resignation, looks down at his own medal in the palm of his hand, and leaves. He might have fought for America in the war, but now he is a citizen of the country of Hard Luck.