Americana by Don DeLillo

Virtually ready to go.”
    “He didn’t talk to me.”
    “I guess I’ll have to resort to pressure.”
    And then, for no reason at all, I slid my foot several inches across the rug, and kicked over the empty coffee cup beneath Richter Janes’ chair. I put my heel on it and crushed it. Nobody seemed to notice. I felt sick and exhausted. I wanted to be back in Meredith’s warm musky bed, lost in the hollow of her breasts, swimming through fish-silver rooms, fathomless, deep in the shipwreck of sleep. I wanted to be with Sullivan in some lunar western wilderness, listening to Mingus on the car radio, and Ornette Coleman with his paintbrush horn, and Sullivan’s arms crossed on her chest in sarcophagus fashion,her invisibly taped features; going flat-out across the northern plains, climbing, Bartók in the Rockies, cowboy songs and the nasal grassy drawl of banjos, and there is Oregon, the seal-slick distant sea. That’s what I wanted. But I sat in Weede Denney’s huge office, in the blue chair by the window, feeling sick and exhausted.
    “Now it’s time to hear from our resident China-watcher. Look smart, Mr. Chubb. How is the China thing coming along?”
    “Weede, it’s shaping up as the best public affairs series I’ve ever been involved in. I’ve already discussed it with seven or eight top people in the State Department. I’ve got calls in to six universities and two foundations. I’ve been putting in nights and weekends. My secretary has some kind of female thing and I’ve had to borrow Chandler Bates’ secretary from time to time. The material is rolling in. Did you know that China had mastered most of the arts and sciences at a time when the Europeans were still combing fleas out of each other’s hair? My wife thinks I’m working too hard. This is a big opportunity for us. China is a riddle. It’s an enigma. Everything is being typed up. Mao Tse-tung and his followers walked six thousand miles to a mountain stronghold when what’s his name was chasing them. The Chink with the wife who went to Wellesley. As soon as all the stuff is typed up and proofread and mimeoed, I’d like to get everybody’s opinion on how it looks. Chandler Bates’ secretary is slow so I don’t know when it’ll be ready. I’m very excited about this series. The Yangtze River is three thousand four hundred and thirty miles long.”
    “What’s the series going to be about?” Warburton said.
    “The whole big thing. China inside out.”
    “Will it say something we haven’t already heard countless times?”
    “There’s a very real prospect of some exciting filmclips.”
    “Taken from a tall hill in Hong Kong, no doubt.”
    “The series will have a definite viewpoint. The stuff I’m getting typed up points that out very clearly.”
    “Points what out?”
    “That a viewpoint is necessary.”
    “What viewpoint?”
    “Yeah, what viewpoint?” Quincy said.
    “I’m working on that with the State Department. They’ve been extremely cooperative.”
    Warburton said: “I’d like to quote Kafka at this juncture. ‘Every fellow-countryman was a brother for whom one was building a wall of protection, and who would return lifelong thanks for it with all he had and did. Unity! Unity! Shoulder to shoulder, a ring of brothers, a current of blood no longer confined within the narrow circulation of one body, but sweetly rolling and yet ever returning throughout the endless leagues of China.’ That, I submit, is your viewpoint.”
    “Ted, that’s wonderful,” Weede said. “I think you’ve really given Reeves something he can sink his teeth into. The part about unity-unity is splendid. It encapsulates all the surging drama of a land mass whose people we can only guess at. Where did you buy that tie?”
    “It really sings, Ted. Maybe your girl can type it up for me. That part about the endless leagues of China is almost as good as unity-unity. Might be a title in there somewhere.”
    “Might indeed,” Weede Denney