The Pursuit of Happiness (2001)

by Douglas Kennedy

  ‘You can think about it for a day or two, if you want,’ he said, lighting up one of the endless chain of Camels he smoked.

  ‘My mind’s made up. When do I start?’

  ‘Monday, if you like. But Sara - do realize that, by accepting this job, you’re not going to have much time for your own writing.’

  ‘I’ll find the time.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before from many a promising writer. They get a story accepted by a magazine. But instead of trying to write fiction full time, they take on a position in advertising or public relations. Which inevitably means that they are too exhausted by the end of the day to do any writing whatsoever. As you well know, a nine-to-five job takes its toll.’

  ‘I need to pay the rent.’

  ‘You’re young, you’re single, you have no responsibilities. This is the time you should take a shot at a novel …’

  ‘If you’re so certain I should be at home writing, then why are you offering me this job?’

  ‘Because, (a) you strike me as smart - and I need a smart assistant; and (b) as someone who gave up a promising literary career to be a wage-slave and edit other people’s work, I consider it my duty to corrupt another promising young writer with a Faustian Bargain they really should refuse …’

  I laughed.

  ‘Well, you’re certainly direct, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘Make you no promises, tell you no lies - that’s my credo. But do yourself a favor, Sara: don’t take this job.’

  But I wouldn’t listen to his advice. Because I didn’t have enough faith in my own talent to set up as a full-time writer. Because I was scared of failing. Because everything in my background told me to grab the secure job option. And because I also knew that Nathaniel Hunter was good news.

  Like Eric, he was in his thirties: a tall, wiry fellow with thick graying hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a permanent self-deprecating scowl on his face. He was rather handsome in a tweedy academic sort of way - and endlessly amusing. He told me he’d been married for twelve years to a woman named Rose, who taught part-time in the Art History department at Barnard. They had two young boys, and lived on Riverside Drive and 108th Street. From everything he said, it was clear that he was devoted to his wife and children (even though, when discussing his family, he would always cloak his comments in cynicism … which, as I came to realize, was his tentative way of expressing affection). This made me instantly comfortable with him, as I sensed there would be none of the flirtatious pressure I experienced while working with Leland McGuire. I also liked the fact that, during this first meeting, he never once made any enquiries about my private life. He wanted to hear my views on writing, on writers, on working for magazines, on Harry S. Truman, and whether I supported the Dodgers or the Yankees (the Bronx Bombers, of course). He never even asked if ‘Shore Leave’ was, in any way, autobiographical. He simply told me it was a very good story - and was surprised to hear that it was my first stab at fiction.

  ‘Ten years ago, I was exactly where you are now,’ he said. ‘I’d just had a short story accepted by The New Yorker, and I was halfway through a novel I was certain would make me the John P. Marquand of my generation.’

  ‘Who ended up publishing the novel?’ I asked.

  ‘No one - because I never finished the damn thing. And why didn’t I finish it? Because I started doing foolish, time-consuming things like having children, and taking an editorial job at Harper and Brothers to meet the cost of having children, and then moving to the higher-paid echelons of Saturday Night/Sunday Morning to pay for private schools, and a bigger apartment, and a summer rental on the Cape, and all those other necessities of family life. So look to this shining example of squandered promise … and turn me down. Don’t Take This Job.’

  Eric concurred. ‘Nat is absolutely right,’ he said when I called him at The Quiz Bang Show to tell him about the job offer. ‘You’re commitment-free. This is the time to gamble a bit, and avoid all the usual bourgeois traps …’

  ‘Bourgeois traps?’ I said with a giggle. ‘You can take the boy out of the Party, but you can’t take the Party out of …’

  He cut me off. ‘That’s not funny. Especially since you never know who’s listening in.’

  I felt awful. ‘Eric, I’m sorry. That was dumb.’

  ‘We’ll continue this conversation later,’ he said.

  We met up that evening at McSorley’s Ale House off the Bowery. Eric was seated at a booth in the rear of the bar, a stein of dark ale in front of him. I handed him a large square package.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘A mea culpa for speaking before thinking on the phone.’

  He tore off the brown wrapping paper. His face immediately brightened as he looked down at a recording of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, conducted by Toscanini.

  ‘I must encourage you to feel guilty more often,’ he said. He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I was utterly indiscreet.’

  ‘And I was probably being a little too paranoid. But -‘ he lowered his voice ‘- some of my former, uh, friends from that era have been having difficulties recently.’

  ‘What kind of difficulties?’ I said, whispering back.

  ‘Questions from employers - especially those in the entertainment industries - about past political allegiances. And there are rumors that the Feds are starting to snoop around anyone who was once a member of that funny little party to which I used to belong.’

  ‘But you left in, what, nineteen forty?’

  ‘Forty-one.’

  ‘That’s five years ago. Ancient history. Surely, no one’s going to care that, once upon a time, you were a fellow traveler. I mean, look at John Dos Passos. Wasn’t he a big-deal Party member in the thirties?’

  ‘Yes, but now he’s righter than Right.’

  ‘My point exactly - Hoover and his guys wouldn’t now accuse Dos Passos of being a …’

  ‘Subversive,’ Eric said quickly, making certain I didn’t use the ‘C word.

  ‘Yes, subversive. My point is: it doesn’t matter if you were once a member of that club, as long as it’s clear you’re no longer affiliated to it. I mean, if an atheist becomes a Christian, is he always considered a “former atheist”, or someone who has finally seen the light?’

  ‘The latter, I guess.’

  ‘Exactly. So stop worrying. You’ve seen the light. You’re a “good American”. You’re in the clear.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘But I promise not to make jokes like that on your office phone again.’

  ‘Are you really going to take this job with Nat?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. And yes, I know all the logical reasons why I should dodge it. But I’m a coward. I need to know where the next paycheck is coming from. I also believe in the mysteries of timing …’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  That’s when I told him about the postcard I’d received that morning from Jack.

  ‘All he said was, I’m sorry?’ Eric said.

  ‘Yes - it was short and not so sweet.’

  ‘No wonder you’re taking the job.’

  ‘I would have accepted Nat’s offer, no matter what.’

  ‘But Lover Boy’s goodbye note clinched the matter?’

  ‘Please don’t call him Lover Boy.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m simply angry on your behalf.’

  ‘Like I told you weeks ago, I’m cured.’

  ‘So you said.’

  ‘Eric, I threw his card away.’

  ‘And accepted Nat’s job offer a couple of hours later.’

  ‘One door shuts, one door opens.’

  ‘Is that an original line?’

  ‘Go to hell,’ I said with a smile.

  The beers arrived. Eric raised his stein. ‘To the new assistant fiction editor of Saturday Night/Sunday Morning. Please keep writing.’

  ‘I promise I will.’

  Six months later, I found myself replaying that conversation in my hea
d on a snowy December afternoon, just before Christmas. I was in my cubbyhole office on the twenty-third floor of the Saturday/Sunday offices in Rockefeller Center. My small grimy window gave me a picturesque view of a back alleyway. There were a pile of unsolicited short stories on my desk. As usual, I had sifted through ten manuscripts that day - none of which were remotely publishable. As usual, I had written a report of varying length on each story. As usual, I had attached standard rejection letters to every story. As usual, I bemoaned the fact that I wasn’t getting any of my own writing done.

  The job had proved far more laborious than expected. It also had virtually nothing to do with editing. Rather, I was employed (along with two of Nat’s other assistants) to work my way through the three hundred or so manuscripts that arrived at Saturday/Sunday each month by unknown writers. The editorial board of the magazine prided itself on the fact that every unsolicited manuscript was ‘given due consideration’ - but it was pretty clear to me after eight weeks there that, by and large, my job was to say no. Occasionally, I would bump into a story that showed promise - or even real talent. But I had no power to get it into print. Rather, all I could do was ‘send it upstairs’ to Nat Hunter with an enthusiastic recommendation - knowing full well that the chances of him running it were negligible. Because the magazine only reserved four of its fifty-two annual issues for stories by unknown writers. The remaining forty-eight weeks were given over to established names - and Saturday/Sunday prided itself on its weekly offering of fiction by the most prestigious writers of the day: Hemingway, O’Hara, Steinbeck, Somerset Maugham, Waugh, Pearl Buck. The list was formidable, and made me realize just how absurdly lucky I was to be one of the four unknown writers to be plucked out of obscurity during 1946 for publication in the magazine.

  As scheduled, ‘Shore Leave’ did appear in the September 6th edition of Saturday/Sunday. Several of my colleagues in the office complimented me on the writing. An editor at Harper and Brothers dropped me a nice note, saying that if and/or when I had amassed a book-length collection of stories, he’d be interested in considering them for publication. Someone from RKO Pictures made a tentative telephone inquiry about the rights to the story, but then sent a letter, explaining that ‘wartime romances are now passe’. As promised, I did despatch a copy of the magazine to Ruth in Maine, and received a cheery card back in return (‘You really have it as a writer … and this reader wants to read more!’). Eric squandered a significant portion of his weekly salary on a celebratory dinner at 21. And Nat Hunter also marked the occasion by taking me to lunch at Longchamps.

  ‘So do you regret taking the job?’ he asked as our drinks arrived.

  ‘Hardly,’ I lied. ‘Do I seem like I regret it?’

  ‘You’re far too well-mannered and polite to ever openly express dissatisfaction. But - as I know you’ve discovered - yours is not the most fulfilling of jobs. Nor, for that matter, is mine - but at least I have the fringe benefit of an expense account, which allows me to lunch writers … like your good self. On which note: where’s the next story?’

  ‘I’m working on it,’ I said. ‘It’s taking a little longer than I expected.’

  ‘You are a terrible liar, Miss Smythe.’

  He was right, of course. I was utterly transparent. And I was getting nowhere with my next story … even though I knew what I was going to write. It was a tale of an eight-year-old girl on summer vacation in Maine with her parents. She’s their only child: over-protected, over-pampered, over-indulged … but also deeply aware of the fact that her parents don’t like each other very much, and that she is the glue which is holding them together. One afternoon, her parents get into a horrendous argument, and she wanders off out of their rented beach house. She leaves the beach, takes a wrong turn and finds herself in a deep set of woods. She remains lost there overnight, and is found the next morning by the police. She’s in shock, but basically unscathed. She has a tearful reunion with her parents. For a day or so afterwards, harmony reigns within the family. But then the parental fights start again, and she runs off into the woods. Because now she realizes that, as long as she’s in jeopardy, her parents will cling to each other and get along.

  I had a title for the story: ‘Getting Lost’. I had the basic narrative structure worked out in my mind. What I didn’t have was the will to sit down and write it. The Saturday/Sunday job was enervating. I’d arrive home at seven each night, sapped. After eight hours of reading other people’s stories I felt like doing anything else but tackling my own work. So I began to play the postponement game - as in, I’m just too depleted to open my typewriter, so I’ll wake up at six a.m. tomorrow and crank out three hundred words before heading to the office. But then, when the alarm went off the next morning, I’d roll over and sleep on until eight thirty. When I got back home that night, I’d be feeling as devitalized as ever, unable to think about my short story. On the nights when my energy level was high, I’d find other things to do. Like heading off to see a great Howard Hawks double bill at the Academy of Music on 14th Street. Or I’d squander the evening with an enjoyably pulpy William Irish novel. Or I’d decide that this was the moment the bathroom needed cleaning …

  The weekends were worse. I’d wake up Saturday morning, determined to put in four hours at the typewriter. I’d sit down. I’d type a sentence. I’d hate the sentence. I’d yank the paper out of the typewriter. I’d roll in another piece of paper. This time I would get two, maybe even three sentences on paper before ripping it from the Remington.

  And then I would decide it was time for a walk. Or a coffee at the Cafe Reggio on Bleecker Street. Or a trip uptown to the Metropolitan Museum. Or a late morning foreign movie at the Apollo on 42nd Street. Or a trip to the laundromat. Or any other piece of busy work which would help me dodge writing.

  This went on for months. Whenever Eric asked how the new story was going, I’d tell him that I was making slow, steady, progress. He’d say nothing, but the sceptical glint in his eye let it be known that he realized I was lying. Which made me feel around ten times more guilty, as I hated deceiving my brother. But what could I tell him? That I had lost all confidence in my ability to string a sentence together, let alone a story? Or that I now knew I was a one-off writer - someone with only a single story to tell.

  Eventually, I confessed this to Eric. It was Thanksgiving Day 1946. Like the previous year, I met my brother for lunch at Luchows. Unlike the previous year, I wasn’t in love. Instead, I was enveloped by disappointment: with my work, with the circumstances of my life … but, most tellingly, with myself.

  Like the previous year, Eric ordered a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate. After the waiter poured out two glasses, Eric raised his and said, ‘To your next story.’

  I lowered my glass and heard myself saying: ‘There is no story, Eric. And you know that.’

  ‘Yes. I know that.’

  ‘You’ve known that for a long time.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Because all writers know what it’s like to have a block. It’s something you really don’t want to talk about with anybody.’

  ‘I feel like a failure,’ I said, swallowing hard.

  ‘That’s dumb, S.’

  ‘It may be dumb, but it’s the truth. I messed up at Life. I should never have taken that job at Saturday/Sunday. Now I’m unable to write. Which means my entire literary output will end up being one forgotten story, published when I was twenty-four.’