The Novel

by James A. Michener

  Jeppson, staggered by this analysis of the war he had seen in such a different light, and by the snide smile at the end, asked: ‘Is that the kind of book you’re writing?’

  ‘I’m not writing any “kind of book.” I’m trying to translate experiences into words.’

  ‘But is that how you interpret your experiences? Our good guys killing their bad gooks?’

  ‘I guess that’s about right.’

  ‘How can you construct a book on those principles?’

  ‘I don’t construct books. I allow them to write themselves.’

  ‘Have you ever finished a book?’

  ‘I’ve read most of the good ones.’

  ‘I meant, written one? To the end?’

  ‘I wouldn’t recognize the end if it bit me. I see life as a continuum. The general who is a horse’s ass in Vietnam comes home and continues to be a horse’s ass, but this time he’s in the Senate.’

  ‘So you don’t see any merit in the two designs I suggested?’

  ‘None. They’d have been just dandy in 1919 after World War One or in 1946 after World War Two. But in 1972? Relating to Vietnam? Real writers would laugh you out of the bookstore.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever get into the bookstore? The way you’re heading?’

  The question was so brutally on target that Benno rose and said: ‘After that insult, there are only two things you can do. Cut your throat or get the hell out,’ and he showed him the door.

  Unwilling to see a colleague dismissed so uncivilly, I walked with Jeppson to the elevator: ‘You wanted to present your petition to the emperor and you did. Thanks for being so even-tempered. My apologies, Sigurd,’ and Jeppson said: ‘Wake up, Shirley, your man will never finish his novel. Men like me assess his kind in the first three minutes. A born loser.’ With a wild, uncontrolled swing of my baseball arm, I smacked Jeppson across the face and stalked back to where Benno was pouring himself a shot and laughing at the empty-headedness of our visitor.

  In 1973 I assisted Lukas Yoder in publishing his third novel, The School, and it was such a dismal failure that even Benno commiserated with me over its swift demise: ‘I read it, darling, and found some very good parts in it. I saw what he was trying to do, but he sure as hell didn’t do it.’

  ‘He has a marvelous idea for his next novel—’

  ‘You mean, they’re going to let him do another? Your shop must be filled with masochists.’

  ‘They’d extend you the same courtesies, Benno, if only you’d buckle down and finish your manuscript.’

  ‘When an author buckles down, what he gets is Yoder’s tripe. Eagles soar, darling, they don’t grub around in local color and cute dialects.’

  I could not afford to fight with him this time in defense of Yoder, nor with anyone at Kinetic, for I knew I was on delicate ground. Since Yoder, writing exactly the kind of books I had encouraged, had produced three dismal failures, I knew I would encounter difficulty if I tried to persuade the management to bother with him any longer, and sure enough, when the editorial board convened I saw they had decided to force my hand in two instances.

  First: ‘It’s ridiculous to keep your Rattner hanging on the hook. Cut him loose and let him swim away. If you don’t want to write the letter, Mr. Jeppson I said nothing, for I realized that in this climate I could not defend both Rattner, with his diminishing chances of ever producing a publishable manuscript, and Yoder, with his inability to sell the fine manuscripts he did produce. Regarding Benno I did not argue back.

  ‘Now, with your man Yoder, the returns are in from the steeplechase. He hasn’t made even the first jump. The race has passed him by. Only sensible thing to do, drop him.’

  One editor asked: ‘Hasn’t his agent cut him loose?’

  ‘Yes, two of them, and one of these days they’ll be dreadfully embarrassed.’

  ‘Miss Marmelstein, we see no hope for this kindly man. He knows what sentences and paragraphs are, but he seems not to have a clue as to what a readable book is.’

  Despite my pleas, Yoder would have been dropped from the Kinetic list had not help arrived from two quarters I least expected. Just as the vote was to be taken, Jeppson checked in: ‘I do believe Miss Marmelstein is right. Yoder knows how to write. His time will come, I’m sure of it.’

  That made the vote nine against, two for, and Lukas Yoder was dead, but at this moment Mr. MacBain coughed a signal, and when we turned to hear what he might advise, he said quietly: ‘When I finished The School I had a strong feeling that this was the kind of book we could very well be selling fifteen years from now. I believe that what Jeppson said is true. This man’s time will come,’ and with that surprising support I was allowed to keep my Dutchman on our list.

  When the meeting broke, I approached Jeppson: ‘You were more than gallant. I appreciate it,’ and he said: ‘Dismal development about Rattner. Do you want me to write the letter?’ and I smiled ruefully: ‘He’d take it as an additional insult. I’ll have to do it.’

  ‘Don’t let his smile disarm you.’

  That night I waited for a propitious moment when Benno and I had finished our pizza and beer and were listening to a Chopin scherzo. Quietly, as if what I had to say was important but in no way vital, I said: ‘Rather unfortunate news, Benno. Kinetic has decided to cut you loose. You keep the advance, of course, but the association is ended.’

  ‘They see no hope that the manuscript …’ his voice trailed off.

  ‘Will ever be finished? In printable form?’

  ‘I suppose that’s what I mean … what they meant.’

  ‘It’s the end of one highway, Benno, but after the meeting I consulted with Suzy Jenkins in subsidiary rights, she knows everybody. Assures me that she’ll have another publisher for you by the end of Friday.’

  ‘Would that be sensible?’ he asked so tremulously that I knew he was wounded, and I also knew that this was not the moment to desert this gifted man who most desperately wanted to write: ‘Of course that’s the right thing to do. A new publisher who can see Green Hell in better perspective, a fresh editor who can provide clearer guidance. It could make a difference.’

  That night in bed we were extremely close, two young people in New York who were tasting triumph—mine—and defeat—his. The next morning, three days before the day promised, Miss Jenkins, of sub rights, rushed in with news that a friend of hers at Simon and Schuster had volunteered to take on Rattner and his Vietnam novel: ‘She said they were real hot at S and S for the big ’Nam book. They’re sure it’s coming and want to grab it.’

  ‘Can I alert him?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a Miss Crippen. She’s waiting.’

  When I called the apartment and started to tell Benno the exciting news, he cut me short: ‘Simon and Schuster would never understand what I’m trying to do. They’re only after the sure best-seller.’

  ‘Benno, I’ve told you a hundred times. If you get your Vietnam book done—the right way—it’ll be the best-seller on that war. The nation is hungry for a solid statement. Hollywood, television—’ I had said exactly the wrong words.

  ‘I’m not interested in hype. I’m interested in writing a great novel. S and S green stamps can go to hell,’ and he slammed the receiver.

  His childish rejection of every effort by a well-wisher to help so depressed me that when I left the subway and started for our apartment I had not the courage to face my whining adolescent. Instead I wandered through the Village looking into the faces of men who passed and wondering: Is he one who takes arms against his sea of troubles? Or is he a quitter? A policeman stopped me: ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but you don’t seem like a night-stalker. Anything wrong?’ and when I replied: ‘Only everything,’ he walked me home and said: ‘Go inside. Things’ll get better.’

  In my distress I could not face Benno and spent the next half hour prowling back and forth in the bright lights outside our apartment-house lobby, with the doorman watching me. I interrogated myself: ‘Here I am twenty-nine years old and suc
cessful in most of what I do, but I find myself baby-sitting two men who can’t get it together, an immature young lover who will not try and an aging codger like Yoder who tries incessantly but can’t hack it.’ Suddenly I shouted to the night air: ‘What in hell is wrong with you, Marmelstein? Always hooking up with losers? Are you a woman from some old-style novel convinced she can detoxify a drunk husband or be the successful muse to a doomed poet? Does this betray a genetic weakness?’ Grimly I decided it did not: ‘Benno Rattner can write if he conquers his malaise. Lukas Yoder is bound to break the sound barrier. And I can help them do it.’ With that resolve I ran the few steps into our building, so eager was Ito embrace Benno and help him get the monkey off his back.

  In the weeks that followed, after I had apologized to Miss Jenkins at Kinetic and Miss Crippen at S&S, Benno and I attended Cater’s Friday seminars with added intensity of interest, and in the discussions that followed, no student was more brilliant than Rattner in the analysis of the novels Cater had discussed. And on the happy occasions when the class was continued in our apartment, with Cater drinking grapefruit juice, Benno was obviously pleased to hear the brilliant critic say: ‘I do believe, Mr. Rattner, you could teach my class as well as I do,’ and several of the listeners applauded.

  This year Cater was tackling in systematic form Erich Auerbach’s remarkable book on the craft of writing. Mimesis he had called it, the art of mimicry or the representation of reality, and in it he used nearly two dozen of the world’s greatest authors to elucidate points: Homer and Petronius, Rabelais and Cervantes, Stendhal and Virginia Woolf. He was what one student called ‘a pretty brainy guy,’ and although some students could not follow either Auerbach’s close reasoning or Cater’s explanations, both Benno and I relished the tautness of the work, which tested our mental sharpness. With others of like mind, we continued the Friday-night sessions in the apartment, with Benno providing drinks and snacks. In such gatherings he glowed, and gave evidence of living on the edge of thought, of wrestling with the fundamental problems of narration.

  When the class touched upon Auerbach’s opinions of Balzac and Stendhal, Benno surprised even me with his wide understanding of these supreme Frenchmen, and when Cater asked: ‘How did you get to know them so intimately?’ he replied: ‘In Vietnam you had to read something, and you quickly ran out of the comic books the military provided.’ Later another student who had been in ’Nam explained that whereas the military did provide comics for its numerous illiterates, it also provided quality paperbacks for those who could read: ‘I too read both the Frenchmen in ’Nam, but I confess I never got out of them the hidden things that Auerbach proposes, and I’ll bet Rattner didn’t either, until the German pointed them out.’

  Unfortunately Benno heard of this assessment and at the next meeting of the seminar he confronted his fellow veteran: ‘I suggest we have a written examination right now, you and I, to determine who understands what,’ and the other veteran backed off, since he had seen that Benno was becoming unreasonably pugnacious.

  Matters were not helped when another classmate somewhat older than Rattner and an editor for a small house that did avant-garde fiction asked to see Benno and me after the discussion: ‘I’ve been listening to you, Mr. Rattner, and you have a fantastic sensitivity about writing. I understand you have a manuscript on the Vietnam war, and we’d be honored at Gallantry if we could take a look at it.’

  ‘It’s not really in shape yet—’

  ‘Most of what we publish isn’t when we first see it. Whipping it into shape is our job. And with your comprehension of the problem …’

  ‘Not ready,’ Benno said in tones louder than necessary, and he would have stalked off if I had not stopped him: ‘Dear, I believe it is ready, and we’d be delighted to have Gallantry take a look. To publish with such a house would be a distinction.’ Afraid of what Benno might do with his manuscript if I left him alone with it, I suggested to the editor: ‘Why not come over now, and we’ll box it up?’

  In that way Green Hell reached a house whose editors were best qualified to impose order on chaos, and the editing leaped ahead with such promise that both Benno and I felt our problems had been solved. But when more practiced editors delved into the copy they quickly saw that considerable work still had to be done before it could be offered to the public as a book.

  An editorial meeting was called that led to the transfer of the manuscript from the enthusiastic younger editor to a no-nonsense man adept at handling experimental works, who invited Benno to his office, where he laid out a master plan for the salvation of what he said was ‘possible material in impossible form.’ His suggestions seemed to Benno so intrusive, and even insulting, to a writer of his stature that he grabbed the manuscript from the editor’s desk and shouted: ‘We’re not making a confection out of this. We’re making a novel,’ and out of the building he stomped, with the manuscript under his arm.

  At the next seminar the young editor apologized: ‘I’m sorry our Mr. Peterson was so harsh. He lets his experience affect his manners. I’d be honored to give it another try,’ but Benno said: ‘It’d be the same thing repeated. Happens in all the houses publishing schlock, doesn’t it?’ The derogatory word and the smile were so inappropriate for the trailblazing work Gallantry did that its editor looked in amazement at Benno and then broke into laughter: ‘You must not read our catalog, Mr. Rattner,’ and another escape door clanged shut.

  In the months when I was doing perhaps the finest editorial work of my life—assisting Lukas Yoder in fashioning his best novel, The Shunning—I was suffering miserably with Benno. Dispirited and no longer trying to convert his notes, many of them brilliant in the judgment of experts who saw them, into a coherent narrative, he was not getting out of bed till one in the afternoon, at which time he drank heavily, but not quite to the point of drunkenness. In the late afternoons, having read the Times and done the crossword, he listened to Brahms and Chopin, alternating those masters with a set of records he especially liked, ‘the best’ of Aida, Don Carlos and Wagner’s Ring, and as the familiar arias soared through the apartment, he sometimes felt a glow of euphoria that masked the dismay he felt at being unable to convert into words the majestic ideas that filled his brain. Once he cried: ‘They had the same problem. To put into musical notes the glorious sounds they heard in their heads. How did they do it?’ And then came the terrifying question: ‘Why can’t I do it?’

  He was aware of the perilous condition he had fallen into because of his dependence on me, and one morning, while I was getting our breakfast, he surprised me by confessing as he shivered in his bathrobe: ‘I had a horrible dream. Lost my temper. Went wild. Shouted accusations. And threatened you, even though I knew, as I was doing it, that I could not survive without you. I know how important you are to me, darling, and I’ll do nothing to endanger that.’ I was so deeply moved by these words, which described our situation so accurately, that I lingered over breakfast, chatting with him about our life together and assuring him that I needed him just as much as he needed me.

  That morning I went to work late, and when I returned in the evening and was preparing our supper, he resumed the conversation in a voice that almost trembled: ‘Shirley, we’ve been on dangerous ground. And I swore an oath this afternoon. I repeat it now: “I will never, on pain of death, do anything to endanger my love for you. If I lose you, all that remains is nothingness … the dark night.…” ’

  He took my hands and kissed them, and I was so elated that he had foreseen the dangers that I actually sang as I cut string beans for the cheese dish he was helping me make. Then I inadvertently destroyed the mood by saying: ‘I do believe Yoder has leaped over his last hurdle. This time he’s got a winner, I’m sure.’

  I heard Benno gasp. Unable to stand the oppressive name that haunted our relationship, he screamed: ‘Don’t ever mention that goddamned Dutchman again,’ and he lunged at me, obviously intending to hit me in the face. When his shaky fist came within inches of my cheekbone, I grabb
ed the long knife I had been using and thrust it toward the middle of his throat. Had he lunged one step closer, he would have impaled himself. We both realized this, and stared at each other in terror. Each dropped the weapon—Benno his fist, I my knife—and that night as shadows darkened in the unilluminated apartment we whispered haltingly to each other about our lives and about the intense love we felt for each other. Toward midnight he asked: ‘Would you feel safer, darling, if we married?’ Before I could answer he explained: ‘I can provide for you because I have more than enough investments. You wouldn’t have to work.’

  ‘I want to,’ I said without hesitating. ‘I love seeing books come to life.’

  ‘So do I. But I can’t seem to do anything about it.’

  ‘I’ll do the creative work for both of us.’

  ‘You don’t insist on marriage?’

  ‘At age thirty-one, no. At age thirty-seven, when I might fear it was all slipping away, maybe. And at forty, when it has slipped away, Yes! Yes!’ I shouted these words and kissed him vigorously. Then I said: ‘But let’s not drown the moment in sentimental tears. Benno, if you had struck me tonight I would have killed you. In my family, honor is all. My father would never have escaped from Nazi Germany had he lacked the courage to sacrifice his life like that’—I snapped my fingers—‘in defense of what he perceived as his basic human dignity.’

  When he made no reply I said almost coldly: ‘Get your life in order. I love you and want to remain with you.’

  The unprecedented harshness of my implied threat was a measure of the fear and confusion I felt over the fact that Benno had come close to striking me in the face with a clenched fist. This was so outside my experience that I had no way of assessing its significance, but I remembered how Uncle Judah had once condemned husbands who beat their wives: ‘No Jewish man ever strikes a woman. Unthinkable. We hear of Irishmen who do it now and then when drunk.’ Well, he was wrong. Benno Rattner came within a hair of slugging Shirley Marmelstein, and the latter was terrified by the thought.