finishing another story, so his daughter’ll be able to finish another year at Vassar; now maybe this afternoon, when he’s got his brains back together, he’ll start writing ‘The Crack-up.’
“Well, anyway,” Bill concluded, with an expansive gesture that seemed to take in the whole estate, “it sure beats the hell out of Larchmont.”
And as the four of them sat around the living room (“We sort of like all the nooks and crannies in here,” Michael explained), Bill remained in charge of the talk.
“All this’ll probably be a bore for Karen,” he began, “because she’s heard nothing else for weeks, but there’ve been a couple of big moves in my life. For one thing, I’ve given up on the Left. As a writer, I mean. Took my two proletarian novels and all the stories, put ’em in a cardboard box and tied a string around it andshoved it into the back of my closet, and I can’t tell you what a relief that was. ‘Write what you know’ – Jesus, I’ve been hearing that advice all my life and I always thought it was too simple-minded, or I was too smart for it or something, but it’s the only real advice there is, right? Oh, I might be able to salvage some of the material from the electrical-workers’ book eventually, but the whole concept’ll have to be different. It’ll have to focus on the problem of why a prep-school-and-Atnherst kid would ever want to work as a union organizer in the first place – you see what I’m getting at?”
They all saw what he was getting at, though only Karen seemed enthralled by it. And the second of his two big moves, announced with unaccustomed shyness, was that he had gone into psychotherapy.
It hadn’t been an easy decision, he explained: it had probably required more courage than anything he’d ever done, and the worst part was that it might take years – years! – before the help he was getting now could have any profitable effect in his life. Still, he had come to a point where no other choice was possible. He honestly felt that if he hadn’t taken this step he might have gone out of his mind.
“How exactly does it work, Bill?” Lucy asked him. “I mean do you lie on a couch and sort of – free-associate? Is that it?” And Michael was surprised that she’d been interested enough to inquire.
“No; no couch – this guy doesn’t believe in the couch – and no real free-association technique either, at least not in the Freudian sense. We sit on two chairs in his office, facing each other, and we talk. All very down-to-earth, for the most part. And that’s another thing: I feel I was extremely fortunate in finding this particular man. I can respect his intelligence; I think I’d have liked him as a person if I’d met him socially rather thanprofessionally, though of course that’s speculation. And we even seem to have a lot in common: he’s something of an old Marxist too. Well, look, it’s almost impossible to explain a thing like this to outsiders; it can’t be – you know – can’t be summarized or anything.”
Then, as if aware that he might have held the floor a little too long, he subsided with his drink to let Michael take over. And Michael did have a few things to say: he began by telling them that he’d been working hard as a bastard. “So I think I’ll be able to finish this new play by the end of the year,” he said, “and it’s beginning to feel like it really does have commercial possibilities.…”
Listening to the tone and rhythm of his own voice as it warmed to its subject, as it enlarged on its theme of high hopes and modest expectations, and as it came to a graceful conclusion on a note of wry self-effacement, he realized what he was doing: he was trying to impress the shy, attentive young stranger at Bill Brock’s side. She wasn’t even an especially pretty girl, but she was here, brand new, and Michael had never been able to resist showing off for a new girl.
“Let’s have another drink,” he said, “and
“Well, anyway,” Bill concluded, with an expansive gesture that seemed to take in the whole estate, “it sure beats the hell out of Larchmont.”
And as the four of them sat around the living room (“We sort of like all the nooks and crannies in here,” Michael explained), Bill remained in charge of the talk.
“All this’ll probably be a bore for Karen,” he began, “because she’s heard nothing else for weeks, but there’ve been a couple of big moves in my life. For one thing, I’ve given up on the Left. As a writer, I mean. Took my two proletarian novels and all the stories, put ’em in a cardboard box and tied a string around it andshoved it into the back of my closet, and I can’t tell you what a relief that was. ‘Write what you know’ – Jesus, I’ve been hearing that advice all my life and I always thought it was too simple-minded, or I was too smart for it or something, but it’s the only real advice there is, right? Oh, I might be able to salvage some of the material from the electrical-workers’ book eventually, but the whole concept’ll have to be different. It’ll have to focus on the problem of why a prep-school-and-Atnherst kid would ever want to work as a union organizer in the first place – you see what I’m getting at?”
They all saw what he was getting at, though only Karen seemed enthralled by it. And the second of his two big moves, announced with unaccustomed shyness, was that he had gone into psychotherapy.
It hadn’t been an easy decision, he explained: it had probably required more courage than anything he’d ever done, and the worst part was that it might take years – years! – before the help he was getting now could have any profitable effect in his life. Still, he had come to a point where no other choice was possible. He honestly felt that if he hadn’t taken this step he might have gone out of his mind.
“How exactly does it work, Bill?” Lucy asked him. “I mean do you lie on a couch and sort of – free-associate? Is that it?” And Michael was surprised that she’d been interested enough to inquire.
“No; no couch – this guy doesn’t believe in the couch – and no real free-association technique either, at least not in the Freudian sense. We sit on two chairs in his office, facing each other, and we talk. All very down-to-earth, for the most part. And that’s another thing: I feel I was extremely fortunate in finding this particular man. I can respect his intelligence; I think I’d have liked him as a person if I’d met him socially rather thanprofessionally, though of course that’s speculation. And we even seem to have a lot in common: he’s something of an old Marxist too. Well, look, it’s almost impossible to explain a thing like this to outsiders; it can’t be – you know – can’t be summarized or anything.”
Then, as if aware that he might have held the floor a little too long, he subsided with his drink to let Michael take over. And Michael did have a few things to say: he began by telling them that he’d been working hard as a bastard. “So I think I’ll be able to finish this new play by the end of the year,” he said, “and it’s beginning to feel like it really does have commercial possibilities.…”
Listening to the tone and rhythm of his own voice as it warmed to its subject, as it enlarged on its theme of high hopes and modest expectations, and as it came to a graceful conclusion on a note of wry self-effacement, he realized what he was doing: he was trying to impress the shy, attentive young stranger at Bill Brock’s side. She wasn’t even an especially pretty girl, but she was here, brand new, and Michael had never been able to resist showing off for a new girl.
“Let’s have another drink,” he said, “and
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