“Yes,” said Mr. Parkhill, faintly.
“Hau Kay!” said Mr. Kaplan, essaying the vernacular. “Ven I’m buyink a suit clothes, I’m gattink de cawt, de pents, an’ de vast.”
Mr. Parkhill shook his head, very sadly. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that you’ve used still another word, Mr. Kaplan.”
Oddly enough, this seemed to please Mr. Kaplan considerably.
Several nights later Mr. Kaplan took advantage of Open Question period. This ten-minute period was Mr. Parkhill’s special innovation in the American Night Preparatory School for Adults. It was devoted to answering any questions which the students might care to raise about any difficulties of pronunciation or idiom which they might have encountered during the course of their adventures with the language. Mr. Parkhill enjoyed Open Questions. He liked to clear up practical problems. He felt he was being ever so much more constructive that way. Miss Higby had once told him that he was a born Open Questions teacher.
“Please, Mr. Pockheel,” asked Mr. Kaplan as soon as the period opened. “Vat’s de meanink fromm—” It sounded, in Mr. Kaplan’s rendering, like “a big department.”
“ ‘A big department,’ Mr. Kaplan?” asked Mr. Parkhill, to make sure.
“Yas—in de stritt, ven I’m valkink, I’m hearink like ‘I big depottment.’ ”
It was definitely a pedagogical opportunity. “Well, class,” Mr. Parkhill said.
He began by telling them that they had all probably done some shopping in the large downtown stores. (Mr. Kaplan nodded.) In these large stores, he said, if they wanted to buy a pair of shoes, for example, they went to a special part of the store, where only shoes were sold—a shoe department. (Mr. Kaplan nodded.) If they wanted a table, they went to a different part of the store, where tables were sold. (Mr. Kaplan nodded.) If they wanted to buy, say, a goldfish, they went to still another part of the store, where goldfish . . . (Mr. Kaplan frowned; it was clear that he had never bought a goldfish.)
“Well, then,” Mr. Parkhill summed up hastily, “each article is sold in a different place. These different and special places are called departments.” He wrote “D-E-P-A-R-T-M-E-N-T” on the board in large, clear capitals. “And a big department, Mr. Kaplan, is merely such a department which is large—big!”
He put the chalk down and wiped his fingers.
“Is that clear now, class?” he asked, with a modest smile. (It was rather an ingenious explanation, he thought; it might be worth repeating to Miss Higby during the recess.)
It was clear. There were forty nods of approval. Mr. Kaplan alone looked uncertain. It was obvious that Mr. Kaplan did not find it clear.
“Is that clear now, Mr. Kaplan?” asked Mr. Parkhill, anxiously.
Mr. Kaplan pursed his lips in thought. “It’s a fine haxplination, Titcher. But I don’ unnistand vy I’m hearink de voids de vay I do. Simms to me it’s used in annodder meanink.”
“There’s really only one meaning for ‘a big department,’ ” said Mr. Parkhill. “If that’s the phrase you mean.”
Mr. Kaplan shook his head. “Sounds like dat—or maybe more like ‘I big de pottment.’ ”
Mr. Parkhill took up the chalk. (‘I big department’ was obviously a case of Mr. Kaplan’s curious audition.) He repeated the explanation carefully, this time embellishing the illustrations with a shirt department, a victrola section, and “a separate part of the store where, for example, you buy canaries, or other birds.”
Mr. Kaplan followed it all politely, even the part about “canaries, or other birds.” He smiled throughout with consummate reassurance.
Mr. Parkhill assumed, in his folly, that the smiles were a testimony to his exposition. But when he had finished, Mr. Kaplan shook his head once more, this time with a new firmness.
“Is the explanation still not clear?” Mr. Parkhill asked. He was genuinely concerned by this time.
“Is de haxplination clear!” cried Mr. Kaplan with enthusiasm. “Ha! I should live so! Soitinly! Clear like gold! So clear! And nacheral, too! But, Mr. Pockheel—”
“Go on, Mr. Kaplan,” said Mr. Parkhill, studying the white dust on his fingers. There was, after all, nothing more to be done. (Domine, dirige nos.)
“Vell! It’s more like ‘I big de pottment!’ ”
“Go on, Mr. Kaplan, go on,” said Mr. Parkhill.
“I’m hearink it in de stritt. Sometimes I’m stendink in de stritt, talkink to a frand, or my vife, mine brodder, or maybe only stendink. An’ somevun is pessing aroun’ me. An’ by hexident he’s giving me a bump. He says, ‘Axcuse me!’ No? But sometimes, an’ dis is vat I minn, he’s sayink, ‘I big de pottment’!”
Mr. Parkhill studied the picture of “Abram Lincohen” on the back wall, and wondered whether he could reconcile it with his conscience if he were to promote Mr. Kaplan to Composition, Grammar, and Civics, with Miss Higby. Another three months of Recitation and Speech might, after all, be nothing but a waste of Mr. K♦A♦P♦L♦A♦N’s valuable time.
1936
JAMES THURBER
THE NOTEBOOKS OF JAMES THURBER
I EXPLAINED in the pages of this journal of biography about ten years ago why my letters will probably never be collected and published under the title “I Saw It Coming,” or under any other title. If you read the piece in question, you have no doubt forgotten what I had to say, so I will briefly summarize its contents. I came back from Europe in 1938 (it says in this piece) to discover that my friends had not saved my letters—or “preserved the correspondence,” to use the formal phrase. Oh, they had preserved it in a manner of speaking, but they “couldn’t put their hands on it at the moment.” That is, they didn’t have the vaguest idea where it was. I knew where it was then, and I know where it is now. Letters have a way of ending up in attics and warehouses, along with polychrome bookends, masquerade costumes, copies of the American Mercury for 1930, and Aunt Martha’s water colors of Blois and Chenonceaux. If my friends ever set out to locate my letters, they will come upon old college yearbooks, dance programs, snapshot albums, and the works of John Fox, Jr., and probably lose interest in the original object of their search.
Now, the seventy-one letters written from abroad in 1937–38 were intended as a section of the collected correspondence to be called “Part III: The European Phase,” and their unavailability is regarded by my publishers as a “major deterrent.” As for “Part I: The Youthful Years” and “Part II: Sturm und Drang (1915–1935),” God only knows what has become of the letters written during those so important formative periods. There remain the letters written since 1938, and while they are “as available as hell,” to quote one of my attorneys, their publication would not constitute “an act of wisdom,” to quote him further. These letters repose in the files of producers, publishers, editors, and agents, and their monotony is another major deterrent, since they all begin with “As God is my judge” or “I would rather die than” and trail off into vague hints or open threats of legal action. After reading my carbons of this correspondence, Mr. Jordan, of the Charteriss Publishing Company, wrote me as follows: “I am afraid that we are all of one mind here in feeling that what had every sign of a swell performance has now turned into a rather dark picture. Mr. Steckley, of our legal department, is especially distressed, but he is perhaps a bit intemperate in estimating that defamation suits in the amount of $3,000,000 would result from the publication of ‘Part IV: The Challenging Years.’ We hope you may have a jolly fairy tale up your sleeve—something about giants and little princesses.”
The middle-aged, or, as he prefers to be called, mature, writer who realizes that his “Collected Letters” (Charteriss, 2 vols., $8) are never going to be brought out sooner or later hits on the idea of gathering together his notes—memoranda, plot outlines, descriptions of characters, and fragments of philosophy—and seeing if he can’t do something with them. He is now treading on ground hallowed by the important notebooks of the great masters, from da Vinci to Henry James, but if his invention is running low an
d his taxes high, he will go brashly ahead with his ill-advised project. This instantly marks him as a minor author. The notebooks of a major author are always brought out after his death, by a literary executor. If you are a major author, the literary executor will hang around your house, known as “the estate,” for at least a year, mousing through voluminous papers, collating and annotating, drinking your Scotch with your widow, and sometimes, in the end, marrying your daughter.
There is also the disturbing chance that your executor, while mousing around in your literary remains, may stumble on the Figure in the Carpet, or what he conceives to be the Figure in the Carpet. That is, he may adduce from the notebooks dubious internal evidence supporting the theory that you were homosexual, impotent, or secretly in love with your radio agent’s wife. It will be up to your daughter, then, to marry your executor and shut him up, but if she is a Vassar graduate, she may collaborate with him on a sequel to the notebooks—“The Real John Marcher,” an honest, courageous, and best-selling examination, on behalf of the enrichment of American letters—that will strip you of every last posthumous pride and privacy. If you are a major author, and all this has frightened you, I suggest that you remove from your notebooks everything that might be regarded as evidence of “the scar”; that is, the early trauma, illness, maladjustment, or inadequacy that led you to become a writer in the first place. Or it might be simpler just to send your daughter to Cornell.
The minor author, known in New York merely as “a writer” and in Hollywood as “a word man,” comes to his typewriter with few, if any, notes to guide him. He may jot down a phrase or two on the back of an envelope in a taxi or on a bus, but such notes are usually thrown away as soon as a piece is finished. Even if they were preserved, an accumulation of them over a period of years would scarcely occupy one afternoon of a serious literary executor, who would classify them as “unr.,” which means “unrewarding” and suitable only as mementos for hotel maids, assistant gardeners, and third cousins. The deceased writer’s aunt could distribute this kind of thing during the services at the church, or just after the services, but I don’t know why anyone should save or cherish an envelope on which is written, “Talking-dog story twist. Man suddenly begins bark,” or “Check if this idea used by Bench, or Perl.”
IF only to justify the title of this essay, I began to poke around one day to see what I could find in the way of memoranda and memorabilia of my own. What I came up with presents, as Mr. Jordan of Charteriss would put it, a very dark picture indeed, complete with at least seven major deterrents: persistent illegibility, paucity of material, triviality of content, ambiguity of meaning, facetious approach, preponderance of juvenilia, and exasperating abbreviation. There is actually only one notebook, and since it is the solidest, or at any rate the heaviest, item in the collection, we should perhaps glance at it first. It is a notebook I kept, or was supposed to keep, in Professor Weiss’s psychology class at Ohio State University in 1913. (My God, Bergie,*1 has it been that long?) The first few pages are given over to a description of the medulla oblongata, a listing of the primary colors, the score of the Western Reserve–Ohio State football game that season, and the words “Noozum, Noozum, Noozum.” (I figured out this last entry after some thought. There was a young woman in the class named Newsome, whom Dr. Weiss always called Noozum.) The rest of the pages contain a caricature of Professor Weiss; one hundred and thirteen swastikas; the word “Noozum” in block letters; the notation “No William James in library”; an address, 1374 Summit Street; a memo: “drill cap, white gloves, gym suit. See G. Packer. Get locker”; a scrawl that seems to read “Orgol lab nor fot Thurs”; and a number of horrible two-line jokes, which I later contributed to the Sundial, the university monthly magazine. Two of these will more than suffice:
(1) HE: The news from Washington is bad.
SHE: I thought he died long ago.
(2) ADMIRAL WATCHING ENEMY SINK: Who fired that shot?
MATE: The ship’s cook, sir. He got the range and stove in her side.
No literary executor is going to get his hands on that notebook.
I am sorry to say that this rather vacant item of thirty-six years ago is the most orderly exhibit in the pitiful clump of notes I have been able to discover. Most of my other material is written in pencil on sheets of yellow copy paper that have been folded over twice, a practice common with newspaper reporters but highly irritating to literary executors. Let us take the notes in order, beginning with the top sheet, which just happens to be the top sheet, since no effort has been made at organization on behalf of chronology, significance of implication, or anything else.
The first sheet, then, bears the following, in pencil, near the top of the upper left quarter: “Digital. b. donna. stramoneum (Jimson weed). Horn quicksilver. Germander. Aloes. Aloes yourself.” The flippancy of the final phrase, “Aloes yourself,” suggests that the piece to which this note obviously has reference was not written in a serious mood. Either that or the author’s mood changed between the time he made the note and the time he actually wrote the piece.
We come now to the longest of the notes, and the only one instinct with a sense of affirmation. There are twenty-five sheets here, one of them foxed, or stained with cider, perhaps, and all of them folded only once. The pages are not dated; nothing ever is. The chirography has a curious smudged or sat-on appearance; there are only twenty words to a page, and again the author’s mood and intent seem ambiguous. The manuscript that grew out of this plot summary was blown out to sea from a Hamilton-bound ferryboat just off Watford Bridge, Bermuda, on April 8, 1947. There was, of course, no carbon copy. Certain editorial symbols have been employed for purposes of clarification, and where words were not clear, they have, quite simply, been guessed at. Question marks have been parenthesized after such words. Perhaps the reader will wish to hazard interpretations of his own. That is his privilege. The notes, in full, follow:
“Middle-aged novelist has been unable to think of anything to write about for eleven years. Name Julian Gordon. Wife Catherine Poe Gordon, aged 37. Mr. Gordon, 48, quit writing same age wife now is. Julian picks up copy Harpers Bazzaar (sic) at Tass (?) agency. Reads swell short story filled with strange new beauty and signed Candace Poe. It turns out to be work of Mr. Gordon’s wife, who’s been secretly knitting little plots, keeping ’em from husband. Somebody has to make Jack (?) for the family, after all. He can’t stand having his wife writing without help from him. Big scene. Julian sarcastically says no female writes without using ‘it was as if’ all the time. Real rift begins when he finds her hangout over garage and reads sheet in ivory-colored typewriter. Tells her at dinner she can’t use sentence ‘The wind ran scampering up the street like a laughing boy.’ You’ve got to use either ‘ran’ or ‘scampered,’ can’t use both for C. sake. She sore. Big scene. Rift widens. To his dismay Julian watches Cath. go more and more Bazzar (sic). She says she is going to rename their country place Greensleeves because look nice on station wagon door. He says by God over his dead body or somebody’s dead body. 15 collar 33 or 34 sleeve B. Brothers blue button-down. Sox 111⁄2. [Note: This appears to be a personal memo, without reference to the plot outline.] Julian, who is still on Ch. 6 of novel begun 1936, discovers Cath. has sold several pieces to mags. in one month and is in correspondence with Cerf, Finkelhoff (?), and Warner Brothers. Julian Gordon announces he intends to buy Smith & Wesson .38 police special on ground that everybody under 21 is out to get him. Says children shooting adults down like dogs all over U.S. J. really means this, but sees wife thinks he is going crazy and decides play part of maniac to hilt. Says sees large silver fish float through bedroom. Says hears horns of elfland f.b. Says Louise Glaum (?) keeps phoning. Decides this crazy make believe just what needs to break ice jam in Ch. 6 of his novel, but finds to horror that Cath. has begun writing same plot in story for Harper’s B. Terrible scene. Jul. says Smitty won’t let her steal his plot. She says he’s terrible to frighten her with fake insanity. He says she’s horrible to use his
supposed condition for H. Bazaar. Cath. buys vicious fawn-colored boxer as protection against J. and Smitty, who she suddenly realizes is S. & W. pistol. Wonderful scene in garage studio while he cleaning gun and she typing and boxer growling. She certain he intends shoot her ‘accidentally.’ Cath. suddenly cries, ‘Get him, Greensleeves!’ She has called the boxer Greensleeves, too, and now sets him on Gordon Julian (sic). Nuts to Gordon nuts to Cath. nuts to you nuts to me. Nuts to all the sons of butchers (?)” That is all there is to the only really interesting item in the Thurber collection.
THERE are a few more odds and ends, or, to be exact, odds and beginnings, but we need scrutinize only three. The first goes, “The beaver is a working fool, who went to manual-training school.” I have never been able to fit this in anywhere. The second says, “Guinea pigs fight when empty milk bottles are clicked together.” They do, too, but I wrote that up for PM in the summer of 1941, and there is no need to go into it here. The third reads, “The American Woman. $1,300 emerald cigarette lighter.” Since the word “woman” is capitalized, this obviously does not refer to any particular woman to whom I intended to give a thirteen-hundred-dollar emerald cigarette lighter. Furthermore, I haven’t got that kind of money. There was probably an idea for a story in this note when I set it down, but I don’t see it now. If you do, you can have it—the idea, I mean. The note itself has been destroyed, along with everything else, except the plot outline of “Greensleeves.” I may take a swing at that story again one of these days, now that the fawn-colored boxer is all the rage.
1949
MICHAEL J. ARLEN
ARE WE LOSING THE NOVEL RACE?
AS if things weren’t bad enough already, word has just reached me that the Russians have recently published a 1,600-page novel. If you don’t think 1,600 pages is a lot of novel, try reading “Ivanhoe” sometime. (And don’t start telling me you’ve already read “Ivanhoe.” I know you, and you probably haven’t read “Vanity Fair” or “Don Quixote,” either.) “Ivanhoe” is only 430 pages long, and it once took me five and a half months to read it, not counting time out for Christmas vacation and the measles. It may not even be as long as that, since I seem to remember that some of the pages had been printed over twice, although, now that I think of it, maybe they were just written twice. At any rate, the new novel is a good 334 pages longer than the latest James Jones book, “Some Came Running,” and a full 432 ahead of the second-seeded American entry, “Atlas Shrugged,” and I think the figures speak for themselves.
Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker Page 25