by Ian Frazier
The only author to whom critics might concede some legitimate claim to Niven’s spiritual paternity is Sam Levenson, and even here I feel they have always missed an important point; namely, that the title of one of Levenson’s finest works, In One Era and Out the Other, with its punning play on the word “era” (and its nicely coupled sense of words going in one ear and out the other, from the popular expression, much as ideas that are “in” to members of one generation, or era, may be “out”—i.e., not only unfashionable but also out of mind—to the members of another) may well have provided Niven with the inspiration for similar assonantal play with whimsy and daring internal rhyme in the brilliant title of his first masterpiece.
It is unfortunate that critics have all too often lost sight of the fact that David Niven’s works are, above all, stories, full of fun and adventure, depicted by an artist who knew enough not to spare the bold strokes. I wonder how many scholars lost in Nivenolatry can remember their joy at first meeting the roistering Errol Flynn, the puckish David Selznick, or the magisterial Louis B. Mayer. I sometimes wish that I could will myself into forgetting his marvelous scene with Mrs. Nikita Khrushchev and Frank Sinatra at the welcoming banquet, so that I could once more taste the delight of reading it for the first time.
Niven experiences life as an imprisoning reality of personal experience, plus mythopoeic elements, a vast sottisier in the tradition of Jessel’s This Way, Miss. In a time when many writers have designs on recondite allusions, his works are a valued presence. Behind the intelligence, etc., is an attitude best summarized.
HOW I DID IT
I knew first that you have to have faith you’re going to get the cards when you aren’t getting the cards, and second that when you do get the cards you have to bet it up. Plus I figured it works for him, it’ll work for you, so I just went out and copied him, got the exact same technique, the exact same timing—everything. I practically traced him. This wouldn’t have worked any other day, either, wouldn’t have worked any other time, but you know the way the road gets kind of wide there by Herrick Park where they made the turnaround for the road-grading equipment—well, I figured that at this time of day, with the tide being twenty minutes later on the Gulf side, there would still be just enough water to float us over but not enough for those big federal boats, and with the sun just hitting the horizon they’re going to have the light right in their eyes when we go over. They had signals that they shouted, and suddenly I realized after I’d heard it for the fourth time that they were calling an audible, where Bev and Marsha aren’t both going to be able to ride home with Roy and you remember how much Marsha has always wanted to go to the Tennessee Tap but Roy would never let her, so I said, “I’ve got to stop to the Tap for a minute but then I’ll run you on home,” and of course she bit. Another thing that didn’t hurt at all was the fact that a lot of these people came from really poor backgrounds and didn’t have even one-tenth the advantages I had—their mothers feeding them Nugrape instead of formula and vitamins and not knowing anything about nutrition probably knocked their college-board scores down a hundred points right there. So that made it easy—all I had to do was copy it all down on my ankle and then razor the chapter out of every book in the library. It was beautiful. It was really beautiful. I noticed that the birds always seemed to go up right after we’d broken our guns to climb a fence, so when we got to a part of the field where it looked good I broke my gun without ejecting the shell and then closed it quietly and stood there ready, and sure enough after about fifteen seconds I’m positive she’s going to walk away without saying anything but then she turns to me and looks at me for a long time and then she hands me a paper plate with her telephone number written on it. Luckily, when I took my license out of my breast pocket the highway patrolman wasn’t looking and I was able to palm the cannister and instead of trying to chuck it away I just held it in my hand and although they searched everywhere I knew the man was a new man and he still wasn’t comfortable acting so hard and letting his position keep him from everybody else so I offered him a piece of chewing gum and we got to talking and suddenly I realized that their entire left flank was up in the air! It wasn’t up against a mountain or river or anything and there was no cavalry to protect it so I went out and bought an entire new suit and a new pair of shoes and got a fake ID made up and then all I needed was an official insignia for the ID and then it came to me: a model-car kit would have decals in it about the right size so I bought one and it fit perfectly and as I was standing there I said to myself, “Oh, God, they know I’m lying, they know I’m a fake,” and then the lady comes up to me and says, “Your table is ready now, Mr. Selznick,” and I felt so great. The grayout from the force of the Gs began to fade and my vision returned and I saw maybe four thousand feet below me two of the A-37 strike force that had come out with us barreling along back to the base with their afterburners going and then it hit me —A-37s don’t have afterburners! And that’s when I realized that they were MIGs, so I walked over to them and said, “Miss—or Mrs., as the case may be—would you care to dance with me?” and that was when I knew that I totally had them.
INTO THE AMERICAN MAW
I was driving back to New York from Boston last Sunday and I stopped in a restaurant to get something to eat, and as I sat there waiting for my order to come, looking at my ice water and my silverware and the paper placemat, suddenly something struck me: I just might be on a savage nightmare journey to the heart of the American dream! I wasn’t sure exactly what savage nightmare journeys to the heart of the American dream required, but I knew that since America has a love affair with the automobile, it was probably difficult to pursue a nightmare journey on public transportation. Fortunately, I had my own car, a 1970 Maverick. Beyond that, I couldn’t think of any hard-and-fast requirements, so I decided that I was on a savage journey to the heart of the American dream, and I was glad that it was a Sunday. That made it more convenient for me. Once I had accepted this possibility, it was amazing how I saw all of America in a new light. Insights started coming to me one after the other, and I decided to reveal them in a voice as flat and affectless as the landscape that surrounded me (I was in a relatively flat part of Connecticut at the time).
First, I realized that discount stores—you know, the discount stores you see all over the place in America —well, I realized that discount stores equal emptiness. Beyond that, I realized that different discount stores represent different shades of emptiness—Caldor’s equals an emptiness tinged with a sad, ineffable sense of mourning for a lost American innocence, while Brands Mart equals an emptiness much closer to what European philosophers call “anomie,” and Zayre’s equals an emptiness along the lines of Sartre’s “nausea.” Next, I realized that the interstate highway system equals nihilism. Have you ever been on Interstate 75 north of Berea, Kentucky? If you have, you know the stretch I’m thinking of—it’s one of the most nihilistic stretches of four-lane possibly in the whole world. Although there certainly are lots of nihilistic interstate highways in every state in this country. In California, every stretch of road—I don’t care whether it’s interstate or a state highway or a county road or gravel or asphalt or oil—all of it is nihilistic.
Thinking about California led me to dizzying thoughts about L.A.—L.A., where sometimes on the signs advertising used-car lots they actually spell “car” with a “k.” … L.A., a place that is so different from the East Coast. New York City, of course, is a woman. In fact, the entire tristate area, including New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, is a woman. But L.A.—L.A. is the City of the One-Night Stands. Or at least that’s what I had heard. Just to be sure, I decided to call L.A. long-distance, my voice crying through wires across the vast, buffalo-scarred dreamscape of a haunted republic. I told L.A. that I was coming out for four days, and could I possibly get a three-night stand. They said no, sir. They said I had to get three one-night stands. Q.E.D.
I paid my check and left the restaurant and got in my car. Luckily, it started. I began t
o drive—to drive to nowhere on a vast blank ribbon, to drive without direction or purpose (beyond getting home sometime that evening), surrounded by other Americans, my partners in the dream, all of them sealed off from me and each other by metal and glass. It got dark and began to rain, and still I was driving. I turned on the windshield wipers, and it wasn’t long before I saw in the windshield the images of all my fathers before me. I saw my great-great-grandfathers’ faces—not all eight of my great-great-grandfathers’ faces but, say, maybe five of them—and then I saw my great-grandfathers and my grandfathers and my father, and all the faces merged into my face, reflected in the blue light from the dashboard as the wipers swished back and forth. And then my face changed into the faces of people who I guess were supposed to be my descendants. And still I was driving, stopping only occasionally to pay either thirty cents or twenty-five cents for tolls. I was on that stretch of 95 where you have to pay tolls every ten miles or so.
I stopped at a gas station to buy cigarettes. I put eighty cents in change into the machine, and pulled the knob for my brand—Camel Lights. Nothing came out. Then I pulled the knob for Vantage. Nothing came out. Then I pushed the coin return, and nothing came out. Then I pulled all of the other knobs, and nothing came out—a metaphor.
LGA-ORD
Then, Beckett decided to become a commercial pilot
“I think the next little bit of excitement is flying,” he wrote to McGreevy. “I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot.”
—Samuel Beckett: A Biography, by Deirdre Bair
Gray bleak final afternoon ladies and gentlemen this is your captain your cap welcoming you aboard the continuation of Flyways flight 185 from nothingness to New York’s Laguardia non non non non non non nonstop to Chicago’s Ohare and on from there in the passing of gray afternoons to empty bleak eternal nothingness again with the Carey bus the credit-card machine the Friskem metal detector the boarding pass the in-flight magazine all returned to tiny bits of grit blowing across the steppe for ever
(Pause)
Cruising along nicely now.
(Pause)
Yes cruising along very nicely indeed if I do say so myself.
(Long pause)
Twenty-two thousand feet.
(Pause)
Extinguish the light extinguish the light I have extinguished the No Smoking light so you are free to move about the cabin have a good cry hang yourselves get an erection who knows however we do ask that while you’re in your seats you keep your belts lightly fastened in case we encounter any choppy air or the end we’ve prayed for past time remembering our flying time from New York to Chicago is two hours and fifteen minutes the time of the dark journey of our existence is not revealed, you cry no you pray for a flight attendant you pray for a flight attendant a flight attendant comes now cry with reading material if you care to purchase a cocktail
(Pause)
A cocktail?
(Pause)
If you care to purchase a piece of carrot, a stinking turnip, a bit of grit our flight attendants will be along to see that you know how to move out of this airplane fast and use seat lower back cushion for flotation those of you on the right side of the aircraft ought to be able to see New York’s Finger Lakes region that’s Lake Canandaigua closest to us those of you on the left side of the aircraft will only see the vastness of eternal emptiness without end
(Pause)
(Long pause)
(Very long pause)
(Long pause of about an hour)
We’re beginning our descent we’re finished nearly finished soon we will be finished we’re beginning our descent our long descent ahh descending beautifully to Chicago’s Ohare Airport ORD ORD ORD ORD seat backs and tray tables in their full upright position for landing for ending flight attendants prepare for ending it is ending the flight is ending please check the seat pocket in front of you to see if you have all your belongings with you remain seated and motionless until the ending until the finish until the aircraft has come to a complete stop at the gate until the end
(Pause)
When we deplane I’ll weep for happiness.
THE MUSEUM
On cold, cold winter nights—when pitiless wolves come bounding across the frozen surface of Gunflint Lake, on the border between Minnesota and Ontario, now yipping and snarling, now calling in a high-pitched, keening wail, now silent and intent, pursuing a whitetail deer that they have startled from its bed, moving like shadows across the snow through the forests of alder and pine and white spruce and red osier dogwood in an easy lope that can carry them for miles without tiring—then is the best time to raise funds for the Pitiless Lamb-Murder Museum.
I am Sandy ffonville-Woof, the curator of the museum. My mother was a ffonville, from one of the first families of St. Paul, Minnesota, and through her I trace my ancestry back to Norman nobility. My father was a huge timber wolf. (The word, by the way, is properly spelled as it should be pronounced—woof with a short oo—and I continue to spell my name the older, more correct way, rather than accept the modern corruption, wolf, a word I can spell but not for the life of me pronounce.) In the winter of 1928, one of the coldest winters anyone remembers, my mother was staying at her family’s cabin in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. One night, right around midnight, with curtains of Northern Lights in the background, she met a huge Eastern timber woof bounding across the frozen surface of Gunflint Lake. They fell in love, and the following June they were married in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul, my mother wearing a gown of cream-colored tulle trimmed with Venetian lace and holding a bouquet of black-eyed Susans and baby’s breath, and my father yipping, snarling, biting, and howling a high-pitched, keening wail.
I was born a normal boy except for the woofish silver-gray hackles between my shoulder blades, and I grew up in a loving crowd of uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. I had the first go-cart in the neighborhood. It was gas-powered and could go twenty-five miles an hour. One day I drove it off the track that Grandpa ffonville had built for me and onto Interstate 35, which ran near our house, and when my mother found out she sent me to bed without my supper. I lay in bed scared to death that when my father came home he would nip me about the head and shoulders with his powerful jaws, which made a sound like two pieces of floorboarding being clapped together. When I heard his claws click across the tile of the family room downstairs, I crawled to the far end of the bed and hid under the covers. But when I peeked out, I saw him coming through the door at an easy canter carrying a fat yearling heifer that must have weighed almost as much as he did, full off the floor. He dropped it next to my bed, and then he showed me how to find the choicest parts—the hindquarters, the loin, and the leaf fat around the kidneys. Then we took the carcass outside and buried it in the back yard.
My mother, accustomed to the usages of St. Paul society, never really fit in with the pack of ravenous, tireless timber wooves that my father hunted with. I remember when he tried to teach her how to bobtail cattle—that is, how to chase cattle across a pasture and snip their tails off at full speed with one powerful bite. She tried and tried, but lacking two- and three-inch-long canine teeth, she never could get the hang of it. My father, for his part, did not get along well with her family, and sometimes when they came by the house he would harry them across frozen wastelands for days until they dropped from sheer exhaustion. But I believe that, deep down, my parents were devoted to each other. Wooves mate for life, and after my mother died my father never took another mate. He lost himself in his work, and became one of the last great stock-killing wooves of northern Minnesota. He eluded government trappers who came from seven states to try to end his depredations, and although no sign was seen of him in the territory after 1963, he was never captured.
It was through a friend of my father, Old Three Toes of Lac Qui Parle County, that I first became involved with the Pitiless Lamb-Murder Museum. I was in my early thirties at the time, working for t
he St. Paul Historical Society, and dissatisfied because I felt the society did not put enough emphasis on the hamstringing of sheep. Then Old Three Toes led me, with barks and whines, to a museum in the twilit north woods of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters—a museum founded in 1906 by pitiless, yipping, snarling, biting, hamstringing wooves to commemorate the slaughter of helpless, fleecy-white little lambs. I realized immediately that I had found my life’s work.
The Pitiless Lamb-Murder Museum sits in a broad clearing in the Northern forest of alder and pine and white spruce and red osier dogwood. In front of the museum are the bobtailing grounds, with spectator stands and stock chutes at one end, and a practice area and special tooth-sharpening rocks at the other. Behind the museum are the pens for cattle, sheep, hogs, horses, deer, caribou, elk, reindeer, big-horn rams, dall sheep, mountain goats, varying hares, marmots, ground squirrels, rabbits, lemmings, and mice. Entering the museum at an easy lope, the visitor first passes through the Outrages in Broad Daylight exhibits. There, helpless immigrants huddle on tree limbs while red wooves made bold by hunger devour their draft oxen and mules, animals that represent the immigrants’ life savings. It is midday, but the wooves do not care. There, also, gunmetal-blue wooves, five feet tall at the shoulders, with bright orange teeth, follow close behind office workers on their way to their jobs in Northern cities, breathing horrible woof-breath down their necks. In another exhibit, you see first blue-eyed, fluffy white baby lambs with pink ribbons around their necks frolicking innocently around gentle, benign wooves. Next, you see the wooves’ expressions change to interest. Then you see the wooves staggering meat-drunk, and nothing left of the lambs but pieces of pink ribbon in woof stool.