The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze

by William Saroyan

  But I couldn’t do it. There were over a thousand pages in the book and I planned to burn one page at a time and see the fire of each page, but when I thought of all that print being effaced by fire and all that accurate language being removed from my library, I couldn’t do it, and I still have the book. When I get tired of reading great writers, I go to this book and read language that I cannot understand, während der Kindheit ist sie von birnförmiger Gestalt und liegt vorzugsweise in der Bauchhöhle. It is simply blasphemous to think of burning a thousand pages of such language. And of course I haven’t so much as mentioned the marvelous illustrations.

  Then I began to look around for cheap fiction.

  And you know the world is chock full of such stuff. Nine books out of ten are cheap worthless fiction, inorganic stuff. I thought, well, there are at least a half dozen of those books in my library and I can burn them and be warm and write my story. So I picked out six books and together they weighed about as much as the German anatomy book. The first was Tom Brown At Oxford: A Sequel to School Days At Rugby, Two Volumes in One. The first book had 378 pages, and the second 430, and all these pages would have made a small fire that would have lasted a pretty long time, but I had never read the book and it seemed to me that I had no right to burn a book I hadn’t even read. It looked as if it ought to be a book of cheap prose, one worthy of being burned, but I couldn’t do it. I read, The belfry-tower rocked and reeled, as that peal rang out, now merry, now scornful, now plaintive, from those narrow belfry windows, into the bosom of the soft southwest wind, which was playing round the old gray tower of Englebourn church. Now that isn’t exactly tremendous prose, but it isn’t such very bad prose either. So I put the book back on the shelf.

  The next book was Inez: A Tale of the Alamo, and it was dedicated to The Texan Patriots. It was by the author of another book called Beulah, and yet another called St. Elmo. The only thing I knew about this writer or her books was that one day a girl at school had been severely reprimanded for bringing to class a book called St. Elmo. It was said to be the sort of book that would corrupt the morals of a young girl. Well, I opened the book and read, I am dying; and, feeling as I do, that few hours are allotted me, I shall not hesitate to speak freely and candidly. Some might think me deviating from, the delicacy of my sex; but, under the circumstances, I feel that I am not. I have loved you long, and to know that my love is returned, is a source of deep and unutterable joy to me. And so on.

  This was such bad writing that it was good, and I decided to read the whole book at my first opportunity. There is much for a young writer to learn from our poorest writers. It is very destructive to burn bad books, almost more destructive than to burn good ones.

  The next book was Ten Nights In A Bar Room, and What I Saw There by T. S. Arthur. Well, even this book was too good to burn. The other three books were by Hall Caine, Brander Matthews, and Upton Sinclair. I had read only Mr. Sinclair’s book, and while I didn’t like it a lot as a piece of writing, I couldn’t burn it because the print was so fine and the binding so good. Typographically it was one of my best books.

  Anyway, I didn’t burn a single page of a single book, and I went on freezing and writing. Every now and then I burned a match just to remind myself what a flame looked like, just to keep in touch with the idea of heat and warmth. It would be when I wanted to light another cigarette and instead of blowing out the flame I would let it burn all the way down to my fingers.

  It is simply this: that if you have any respect for the mere idea of books, what they stand for in life, if you believe in paper and print, you cannot burn any page of any book. Even if you are freezing. Even if you are trying to do a bit of writing yourself. You can’t do it. It is asking too much.

  Today it is as cold in my room as the day I wanted to make a fire of books. I am sitting in the cold, smoking cigarettes, and trying to get this coldness onto paper so that when it becomes warm again in San Francisco I won’t forget how it was on the cold days.

  I have a small phonograph in my room and I play it when I want to exercise in order to keep warm. Well, when it gets to be very cold in my room this phonograph won’t work. Something goes wrong inside, the grease freezes and the wheels won’t turn, and I can’t have music while I am bending and swinging my arms. I’ve got to do it without music. It is much more pleasant to exercise with jazz, but when it is very cold the phonograph won’t work and I am in a hell of a fix. I have been in here since eight o’clock this morning and it is now a quarter to five, and I am in a hell of a mess. I hate to let a day go by without doing something about it, without saying something, and all day I have been in here with my books that I never read, trying to get started and I haven’t gotten anywhere. Most of the time I have been walking up and down the room (two steps in any direction brings you to a wall) and bending and kicking and swinging my arms. That’s practically all I have been doing. I tried the phonograph a half dozen times to see if the temperature hadn’t gone up a little, but it hadn’t, and the phonograph wouldn’t play music.

  I thought I ought to tell you about this. It’s nothing important. It’s sort of silly, making so much of a little cold weather, but at the same time the cold is a fact today and it is the big thing right now and I am speaking of it. The thing that amazes and pleases me is that my typewriter hasn’t once clogged today. Around Christmas when we had a very cold spell out here it was always clogging, and the more I oiled it the more it clogged. I couldn’t do a thing with it. The reason was that I had been using the wrong kind of oil. But all this time that I have been writing about the cold my typewriter has been doing its work excellently, and this amazes and pleases me. To think that in spite of the cold this machine can go right on making the language I use is very fine. It encourages me to stick with it, whatever happens. If the machine will work, I tell myself, then you’ve got to work with it. That’s what it amounts to. If you can’t write a decent short story because of the cold, write something else. Write anything. Write a long letter to somebody. Tell them how cold you are. By the time the letter is received the sun will be out again and you will be warm again, but the letter will be there mentioning the cold. If it is so cold that you can’t make up a little ordinary Tuesday prose, why, what the hell, say anything that comes along, just so it’s the truth. Talk about your toes freezing, about the time you actually wanted to burn books to keep warm but couldn’t do it, about the phonograph. Speak of the little unimportant things on a cold day, when your mind is numb and your feet and hands frozen. Mention the things you wanted to write but couldn’t. This is what I have been telling myself.

  After coffee this morning, I came here to write an important story. I was warm with the coffee and I didn’t realize how really cold it was. I brought out paper and started to line up what I was going to say in this important story that will never be written because once I lose a thing I lose it forever, this story that is forever lost because of the cold that got into me and silenced me and made me jump up from my chair and do bending exercises. Well, I can tell you about it. I can give you an idea what it was to have been like. I remember that much about it, but I didn’t write it and it is lost. It will give you something of an idea as to how I write.

  I will tell you the things I was telling myself this morning while I was getting this story lined up in my mind:

  Think of America, I told myself this morning. The whole thing. The cities, all the houses, all the people, the coming and going, the coming of children, the going of them, the coming and going of men and death, and life, the movement, the talk, the sound of machinery, the oratory, think of the pain in America and the fear and the deep inward longing of all things alive in America. Remember the great machines, wheels turning, smoke and fire, the mines and the men working them, the noise, the confusion. Remember the newspapers and the moving picture theatres and everything that is a part of this life. Let this be your purpose: to suggest this great country.

  Then turn to the specific. Go out to some single person and dwell with
him, within him, lovingly, seeking to understand the miracle of his being, and utter the truth of his existence and reveal the splendor of the mere fact of his being alive, and say it in great prose, simply, show that he is of the time, of the machines and the fire and smoke, the newspapers and the noise. Go with him to his secret and speak of it gently, showing that it is the secret of man. Do not deceive. Do not make up lies for the sake of pleasing anyone. No one need be killed in your story. Simply relate what is the great event of all history, of all time, the humble, artless truth of mere being. There is no greater theme: no one need be violent to help you with your art. There is violence. Mention it of course when it is time to mention it. Mention the war. Mention all ugliness, all waste. Do even this lovingly. But emphasize the glorious truth of mere being. It is the major theme. You do not have to create a triumphant climax. The man you write of need not perform some heroic or monstrous deed in order to make your prose great. Let him do what he has always done, day in and day out, continuing to live. Let him walk and talk and think and sleep and dream and awaken and walk again and talk again and move and be alive. It is enough. There is nothing else to write about. You have never seen a short story in life. The events of life have never fallen into the form of the short story or the form of the poem, or into any other form. Your own consciousness is the only form you need. Your own awareness is the only action you need. Speak of this man, recognize his existence. Speak of man.

  Well, this is a poor idea of what the story was to have been like. I was warm with coffee when I was telling myself what and how to write, but now I am freezing, and this is the closest I can come to what I had in mind. It was to have been something fine, but now all that I have is this vague remembrance of the story. The least I can do is put into words this remembrance. Tomorrow I will write another story, a different story. I will look at the picture from a different viewpoint. I don’t know for sure, but I may feel cocky and I may mock this country and the life that is lived here. It is possible. I can do it. I have done it before, and sometimes when I get mad about political parties and political graft I sit down and mock this great country of ours. I get mean and I make man out to be a rotten, worthless, unclean thing. It isn’t man, but I make out as if it is. It’s something else, something less tangible, but for mockery it is more convenient to make out that it is man. It’s my business to get at the truth, but when you start to mock, you say to hell with the truth. Nobody’s telling the truth, why should I? Everybody’s telling nice lies, writing nice stories and novels, why should I worry about the truth. There is no truth. Only grammar, punctuation, and all that rot. But I know better. I can get mad at things and start to mock, but I know better. At its best, the whole business is pretty sad, pretty pathetic.

  All day I have been in this room freezing, wanting to say something solid and clean about all of us who are alive. But it was so cold I couldn’t do it. All I could do was swing my arms and smoke cigarettes and feel rotten.

  Early this morning when I was warm with coffee I had this great story in my mind, ready to get into print, but it got away from me.

  The most I can say now is that it is very cold in San Francisco today, and I am freezing.

  The Earth,

  Day,

  Night,

  Self

  Sitting across the table from him, he listened to the girl talking, telling him something that involved each of them, something that had begun in him years ago and would never end, something in man . . . about the earth, being alive on it, going through days and nights, being something with substance and motion, oneself.

  From the second-story window he saw a man riding a bicycle in the street . . . two wheels rolling on the levelness of the city and a man on it . . . the girl talking . . .

  That must have been the year he had gone with his mother and father to the photographer’s, the year he was nearly three. He didn’t remember actually going, but he had the photograph, and in it he saw the tall man holding him in his arms, and his mother sitting beside the tall man, all of them smiling. It was the year his father was alive, smiling in the photograph.

  The next thing he knew he was holding his mother’s hand, walking in the night through the dark city, in the silence. Where are we going? he asked.

  He did not remember an answer, and he continued to walk beside his mother, maybe four years old.

  Night came and he sent his sadness into his sleep, weeping softly there without shedding tears.

  Once he laughed, but it was not like laughing when you were awake. It was much bigger, it meant all sorts of things; it had to do with everything, and in his sleep he was afraid someone might hear him and ask why he was laughing . . . his mother might want to know, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to tell her . . . but in his sleep he knew why he was laughing, where the laughter came from, what it meant, but it wasn’t in language and it couldn’t be said in words. It was there, though, the whole meaning for himself, the whole picture of the earth and man. To make him laugh.

  One morning he found himself in a school building, staring at the horror. To teach you to read, he heard. I don’t want to read, he wanted to tell them, but he couldn’t explain. He knew he didn’t need to read; it was all there already, before him, both at night and during the day, and seeing everything he felt no need for the words. The things were the words themselves and he had eyes, he was seeing how it was, but they led him to a room full of desks and small boys and girls and they said, What is your name?

  Oh, he said. You mean me? That lady, he wanted to say, she, the one that was here and went away, she is my mother. The tall man in the picture, who isn’t living any more, he is my father. They call me John. John, he told them. My name is John. The other name is Melovich.

  He sat down and forgot what happened for a month.

  But the worry got into his sleep. About the other boys in the room, and something they meant to do about him. It was that they were thinking of him, in their own minds, seeing him with their eyes, destroying the secret. They were talking of him, and he didn’t want anyone to do that. He wanted wholeness, to be alone solidly, not talked of, not seen, not recognized; but the boys had him in their minds. John, they said, how far is it to China? Of course he didn’t know. Then one of the boys got on his hands and knees behind him, and another boy pushed him over, and the whole world went up-side down, and all the boys laughed at him and said: China is all the way around the world, ha ha ha.

  Oh, I see, he thought. Games, they mean. I thought they meant China, but they mean to play. If you believe what they ask, if you notice the words, then they push you over, laughing at you. The words are not to be listened to. They are for the game, China, and over you go. I see, he thought. That is it.

  Also, the teacher. She was angry about him. She said that he was stupid. It was because he wanted to know, because of the questions he was asking, and she made him stand in the corner. She said, c-a-t is cat, and he said: No, the cat is black hair and whiskers and tail and eyes. That’s all he knew, but it made her very angry and she shook him, and all the little boys and girls laughed at him. C-a-t cat, that wasn’t so. The four legs walking quietly, that was the cat. Why were they making things up?

  The worry got into his sleep, and he brought out the cat in his dream and had it walk before the teacher. There, he said, there is the cat, not what you said. You see? The fur walking, and the eyes.

  Then it was night and he was awake, standing in the street, looking up at the dark window of the place where he lived. The front door was locked and no one was in the house. He was in the street, crying. My mother, he said to the people who questioned him, she is not in there. He thought everything was going to fall to pieces, and he felt the bigness of the world, other people alive who were not related to him.

  He didn’t remember what finally happened. All he remembered was being in the dark street, crying to himself, feeling the whole thing breaking to pieces.

  They taught him to read. It was silly, about a dog called Fido. That�
��s all he remembered, a picture of a dog called Fido, and some print spelling words about the things Fido could do. Bark, bow wow, run and play, and so on. It was all pretty stupid, but it was what they were teaching in the school, so he tried to pretend that it made sense, and he tried hard not to ask too many questions.

  He was sitting in a dark theatre beside his mother, looking at pictures of people moving quietly at the front of the theatre, touching one another, even with their lips, making faces, running, doing swift things, making a story. Then he saw the sea, and the sea did nothing. It was splendid, big and simple, so easy for him to believe, all that water, standing quietly, no words and no people making faces and running, all the water quietly. And the sea went into him, appearing again in his sleep, vast and lovely and wordless.