loan without shining my shoes or straightening my tie. The answer is
terribly simple. Banks only loan money to those who already have it.
I walked defeated along Michigan Avenue under the cloudless sky. It was
all so simple, logical, and perfectly mechanical. I just couldn’t make
something out of nothing, no matter how strong my will or how deep my
faith. I had to have money.
As I walked, a comment of my father’s flitted through my mind: “Some men
make it early in life, but you, my son, will make it a little late in
life. But you’ll make it.” I said to myself, “Look, nothing has changed.
Nothing at all. If you don’t expand, what of it? Are you beginning to
think of the kind of success that feeds the infantile longings of so
many adults? What’s wrong with what you’ve accomplished?”
I remembered going to my father to talk about college. “Go to college,”
he told me. “It is very important to get a college education. I’m right
behind you.”
“It takes money to go to college,” I said.
“Money?” he said. “What fool can’t go to college with money? The idea is
to make it without money!”
And so I did.
I was feeling better when I reached the shop, but was still so deep in
my soliloquy that I rested my head on the desk and did not even hear Ben
Kartman’s steps when he came up the stairs.
“What’s the trouble, Stuart?” he said, standing in the doorway looking
at me.
“I went to the bank,” I told him. “They turned me down. I’m a poor
credit risk and they never heard of World War II, believe me. So
there’ll be no expansion.”
“How much will the construction cost?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“But you’ll need some more money for stock and to fix the place up,
won’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Well?” He began to laugh while I talked my problem out. Finally he
stopped laughing and I stopped talking.
“Get your hat and come with me,” he said. “I’ll get you the money.”
We went to the bank together. Ben signed the notes with his house as
collateral. I got the money and the breakthrough began. But I owed the
bank two thousand dollars! I no longer slept so well.
Anyway, down went the partition and the Seven Stairs expanded. Joe
Reiner, then sales representative for Crown Publishers, happened in and,
observing that I needed more book shelving, took me to see Dorothy
Gottlieb, who was moving her Gold Coast bookstore to the Ambassador East
Hotel. She had plenty of shelving to sell.
On a Sunday morning, Joe and I got a mover to bring in the new fixtures.
We came puffing and grunting in with the shelving and nearly annihilated
my sick ballet dancer, who was supposed to have moved out a week before.
He lay on a mattress in the middle of the floor and, upon seeing us, let
out a yell and drew the blankets up to his chin, crying, “What do you
think this is? A Frank Capra movie? Here I lie on my virtuous couch, too
ill to move, and you...!”
I developed several successful techniques for selling books. For
example, when I read a book that I liked very much, I would send out a
post card to everyone I believed might be interested in it also. There
is not much room on a post card, so the words describing the value of
the book had to be selected carefully. I avoided the dust jacket
phrases. “Great,” “brilliant,” and “exciting” won’t cut any mustard. You
must know your book and know your mailing list.
Another technique was the use of the phone call—a very delicate tool
that must not be employed indiscriminately. The call must, first of all,
be made to someone who you are reasonably sure won’t resent it. And you
must know exactly what to say and say it quickly.
When a friend came into the store, I might greet him with “Ah, guter
brudder, glad you stopped in. I have a book for you.” Or, “Here is a new
Mozart recording you must hear.”
To have a successful book store means also to be a slave to detail. This
I found killing. Often I would struggle for hours to track down a title
someone had requested, go to the trouble of ordering it (more often than
not on a money in advance basis), only to find that the customer no
longer wanted the book. Or I would special order a book, run like a
demented fool over to the customer’s office to deliver it personally,
and discover that the wrong book had been ordered in the first place.
You could pretend to yourself that this kind of service would endear you
to the customer and cement a faithful relationship, but it didn’t always
work that way.
I worked hard, but my customer relations were not always perfect. I
demanded that customers buy books for the same reasons that I sold
them—out of a serious regard for greatness. I could not stand having
myself or my books and records treated as a toy by the jaded and
self-satisfied. And I was a jealous god. Today I know better, yet I
instinctively back away from a customer who comes into the store
carrying a package from another bookseller.
But well or poorly done, it took all kinds of doing: typing post cards,
making phone calls, washing and sweeping the floor, cleaning the windows
and shelves, running to the post office, delivering books, and talking
in the meanwhile on the mind of Spinoza, the beauty of the Mozart D
Minor Quartet, the narrative power of Hemingway, or the value of _The
Caine Mutiny_, which on first appearance was slow to catch on.
Still, the business was developing. Each day I met someone new. Each day
presented new challenges to one’s strength and intuition and pure
capacity for survival. Around this struggle there developed a convivial
circle which was ample reward for anything. On any Saturday afternoon it
might include Nelson Algren, Jack Conroy, Studs Terkel, Ira Blitzsten,
Dr. Harvey Lewis, Marvin Spira, Evelyn Mayer, David Brooks and Dr.
Robert Kohrman, holding forth on an inexhaustible range of subjects,
filling the air with tobacco smoke, drinking fiercely strong coffee from
sometimes dirty cups, and munching salami and apples. The world of the
Seven Stairs was beginning to form.
For months I practically made a career of selling Nelson Algren’s
neglected volume of short stories, _The Neon Wilderness_. Nelson had
already received considerable acclaim for the book, as well as his
already published novels, _Somebody in Boots_ and _Never Come Morning_,
but short stories don’t sell (it is said). In any event, these stories
represent some of Algren’s finest work (which at its best is very fine
indeed), and I placed the book in the hands of everyone who came into
the shop. I sold hundreds of copies. Then to keep the book alive, we
held periodic parties. One month we would call it Nelson’s birthday,
another month the birthday of the publication of the book, still another
the birthday of the book itself. We invariably invited many of the same
people, along with new prospects. At one point, Ira Blitzsten was moved
to remark that he didn’t want Nelson to autograph his copy as he wanted
the distinction of being the only person in Chicago with an unsigned
copy.
Algren is a tall, lanky individual with mussed blond hair and a
sensitive face, sometimes tight and drawn, sometimes relaxed. In those
days he wore steel rimmed spectacles and Clark Street clothes—a pin
stripe suit, a garish shirt, a ridiculous tie, in spite of which he
still had a fairly conservative bearing. Once he even wore a bow tie
that lit up.
He is a quiet man. You sense he has a temper, but he seldom uses it. He
is an authority on the argot of the “wild side of the street,” and I
never heard him utter a vulgar word. He has the faculty of putting
others at ease. When he talks with you, he gives you a remarkable
singleness of attention. Even if the room is overflowing with people,
you know that he is listening only to you.
He is a loner who reveals nothing of his private life. In fact, he never
gave me his address. When he is introduced to someone, he shakes hands
and nods his head at the same time. He gives you the simultaneous
impression of understanding and remoteness. You are not surprised to
find that his humor is sardonic.
Nelson Algren and Jack Conroy could perform a remarkable duet on the
subject of James T. Farrell, Conroy in a broad Irish accent, Algren in a
clipped, half muttering manner. I never learned the personal source of
their animosity, but the name of Farrell had the magic to channel all
their hostilities and frustrations into a fountain of pure malice. It
was wonderful.
Sometimes Nelson brought his mother. Sometimes he would bring with him
one of the girls related to the novel he was then writing, _The Man with
the Golden Arm_. One night Nelson took me to “the wild side.” We entered
a Clark Street tavern, a long, bare hall perhaps 150 feet long and
thirty feet wide. Along one wall stretched a huge bar. It was a busy
evening—every stool was occupied. We crossed the wooden floor to the
other side of the room where there were rows of small tables with
folding chairs set around them. Before we were seated, one of the men at
the bar slugged his woman in the mouth, and the two fell off their
stools, blood gushing, and landed, one on top of the other on the floor.
The bartenders came around and dragged them out, pitching them into the
street.
A moment later one of the bartenders was at our table asking for our
order. He knew Nelson, and they chatted easily. I was, frankly,
sniffing, for as the stale beer smell of the place settled, I had a
sense of being literally in a zoo.
As I looked about, I observed a mesh of wire fencing across the section
of the ceiling beneath which we were sitting. I got up and inspected.
There above us were live monkeys sitting on a bar behind the fence. I
sat down and asked Nelson what this meant.
He said, “Wait and see.”
The tavern din was terrible, a demonic blend of shouting, laughing,
swearing, name-calling—the human cries at inhuman pitch. It was out of a
Gorky novel.
We drank several beers and waited, talking very little. Nelson’s face
seemed fixed in a slight smile of playful disdain. It was impossible to
say of what.
My bafflement was intensified when two men walked in and approached the
place where we were sitting. They pulled a ladder from the wall, climbed
the steps, and opened the door of one of the cages. One of the men took
a monkey by the leather strap attached to its collar, placed it on his
back, and climbed down the ladder. He walked to the far end of the room,
opened a door, went in, and closed the door after him and his companion.
I sat rooted to my seat, failing to understand what I had seen. Was this
in some way the meaning behind the phrase, “a monkey on his back”? I
knew that whatever was going on here could scarcely be an idle
zoological experiment, yet somehow I felt an impenetrable wall between
my innocence and the full possibilities of human depravity.
I looked once more at the people in the tavern, and all at once it was
with different eyes. I no longer saw them as “dregs” and “strays.” I saw
something terrible, humiliating, too outrageous to form into words.
What is happening? Who are these people? Are they, indeed, people? But
am I? Have I an identity?
My smugness melted and the distaste I had felt for what I saw now
angered me. I had come into this place small, mean, and superior, a cad
and a fop, the epitome of what I had long viewed with scorn in others.
I had a better notion of what Nelson was seeing and the nature of his
protest. He had shown me a world where people lived without choice or
destination.
I lived for days with this nightmare, asking myself why I should feel
guilt for those who no longer feel responsible for themselves. Then it
occurred to me that the question was never one of guilt, but only of
love. The agony exists regardless of the setting. The lack of love is
not alone on Clark Street.
To be successful, an autographing cocktail party must be planned with
consummate skill and attention to detail. You must leave nothing to
chance. You may not pretend that everything will work out satisfactorily
at the last minute. It will not. And because I respected writers so
much, I tried to guard them against the ultimate humiliation of sitting
at a table before a pile of their own books, with no buyers.
I adopted the following procedure: First, get from the author his own
list of names—people he would like personally to invite to his party.
Phone each of them, or at least write a post card asking if they are
interested in receiving a signed copy of the book. Next, send out the
invitation to all your charge accounts, then check the mailing list for
people you think will be interested in the book. Avoid freeloaders.
Invite the press and the literary critics and try to write a short human
interest story for the columnists. In short, build up as big an advance
as possible.
Furthermore, don’t throw a skimpy party. People carry away impressions,
and the only impression you can afford is a bountiful one. It is said
that all the world loves a lover, but one thing you can be sure of is
that they love a winner. So avoid failure by planning against it, and
then pray. Pray that it won’t rain or turn freezing cold, that the pipes
won’t break or the electricity be turned off. Pray that you may fulfill
your multiple responsibilities; to the author, the publisher, and your
own hopes for continuing operation.
It seemed natural that one of our greatest cocktail parties should be
given for Nelson Algren upon publication of _The Man with the Golden
Arm_. Yet behind the scenes things went very oddly, and for a time it
was hard to tell whether either the author or the publisher wanted the
party—or the large downtown department store, either, which entered the
picture as a prospect for the event.
Anyway, it took place at the Seven Stairs. Ken McCormick,
Editor-in-Chief of Doubleday, Nelson’s publisher, flew into Chicago. I
can see him still, loaded with books in both arms, carrying them from
one room to another.
There was high excitement—newspaper photographers and an unbelievable
crush of people. It all began to tell on Nelson’s nerves and mine. It
seemed to me he was writing too long in each book, and at times he would
change his mind in the middle of an inscription and ask for another copy
(to Nelson such revision was a literary exercise, to me a spoiled copy
was a financial loss). The line of guests seemed endless and I began to
develop an active dislike for people, for money, for the whole business.
Besides, it was getting awfully hot. Nelson and Ken and I removed our
coats. Nelson even gave up writing long paragraphs in each book. I tried
keeping a cool drink at his side at all times. It seemed to help.
It was a great but strange party. Nelson was a success, and in a way I
was, too. And this altered things enormously. It had never occurred to
me how people attach themselves to the rescue phantasy, how easily
failure inspires love, how differently even the semblance of success
affects relationships. All at once, people who had only wanted to help
me became hypersensitive and found me snubbing them. And I was feeling a
new sensitivity also: “You can’t destroy me in the process of buying
from me.” It was the beginning of a new struggle.
The last guest finally left. Ken McCormick was a very happy publisher. I
swept all interior confusions aside and counted up the books. We had
sold one thousand copies of _The Man with the Golden Arm_ in a single
night! It was almost too much for Ken—he had to see it to believe it.
And we were all dead tired. Just as I was about to turn the last light
switch before we went out the door, I remembered and asked Nelson to
autograph a book for me. As he bent down to write, I could see Bob
Kohrman and myself sitting on the sand dunes reading the galleys of the
book. I remembered conversations with Nelson and Jack Conroy in regard
to the title, and Jack’s needling of Nelson when the advances were
running out, saying, “Any day now you’ll be begging to come to work on
the encyclopedia” (the constant drudgery to which Jack has given most of
his working hours for two decades.)
Nelson, crouching over the book, wrote: “For Stuart and Jennie. The best
in the West (as well as the South, North and East). Because he’s the boy
with the golden wife—and she’s the girl with the golden guy.”
For there was indeed now a Jennie, a golden girl with whose short life
mine was now linked in a more responsible relationship than I had ever
imagined I would assume—a decisive part in the unimaginable future
building before me.
We were all on our way now, but Jack Conroy was the last to leave. He
had waited until the very end to say, “Papa, it was a fine party. I’m
proud of you and your efforts for Nelson.” They were all gone now, the
columnists, the celebrities, the crowd that stretched in a file of twos
almost to the corner drug store. Only Jack Conroy, a huge and gentle man
with his “Hello, Papa,” the extended hand, and the tiny stare in the
blue, grey-flecked eyes, always waiting, wondering how you are going to
accept his greeting.
This is the wild, humorous, tender man who gave Tennessee Williams his
first important break, who first published Richard Wright, who wrote a
bestseller thirty years ago that is highly regarded by the few who
remember it, and who is rated as the second most popular American author
in all of Russia, one below Melville and one above Poe.[1] His only
material reward: a purported fortune in rubles which he has no intention
of ever collecting.
When Jack edited _Midland Humor_, a discerning anthology published in
1947, he was late to his own party at the Seven Stairs. When he arrived,
I was shaken, as I always am, by his look of, “Will I be scolded? Will I
be forgiven?”
He can be the most jocular of men, and the most understanding. One
afternoon over coffee at the Seven Stairs he reported at hilarious
lengths on the drinking prowess of his friend, Burl Ives, who was then
doubling between a cabaret engagement at the Blackstone Hotel and the
vaudeville show at the Chicago Theater. I was in the depth of my
psychiatric period and suggested that help might be in order.
“He doesn’t seem unhappy about it,” said Jack, innocently.
Today Conroy, one of the most talented men in American letters, quietly
stands and looks. When he talks, he stares directly at you, or turns his
head entirely away and speaks to empty space.
I think he is the most honest man I have ever met: in his intent, in his
appraisal of others and their writing, and in his own bereavement. As
the gait grows slower, the shyness becomes more pronounced and the gaze
extends away farther and farther.
He has been called the Samuel Johnson of the Chicago South Side. The
designation fits in many ways—the large physical build, the forceful
expression and comprehensive knowledge, the long toil in the compilation
of reference works—and in some ways not at all. He has been many things,
at times even a wandering player, and his physiognomy suggests a
somewhat more cerebral William Bendix.
He can provide the most wonderful encouragement to others. But his own
burden is lack of time—lack of time for all his obligations, for all he
should do. Publisher after publisher offers him handsome advances, and
he declines them. He knows he would not fulfill the obligation.
We were at lunch not long ago. “I’m going down to Mexico on my
vacation,” he said. “I’m going to visit Motley.”
I had known the tragic eyes of Willard Motley, whose _Knock on Any Door_
did not fill our friend, Algren, with any particular enthusiasm.
“You know, that Nelson is mean,” Jack said. “He wrote some nasty things
about me in the _Reporter_. Did you see that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, he did. We used to see a lot of each other.”
We walked back to the office building where Jack does his faithful,
painstaking hack work.
“I’ll drop you a line from Mexico,” he said. “I’ll tell Motley that
you’re writing a book. Take care of yourself. I’ll see you when I get
back.”
The grey-blue eyes were suddenly swollen with sadness, and the voice
stretched in a heavier drawl. I wished with all my heart that things
would work out well for Jack Conroy.
The relationship between genius and disaster is too deep for me to
comprehend. I do know that genius is never made; it is only discovered.
There has to be a front runner. The notion that genius will out,
regardless of circumstances, is simply to ignore the nature of genius,
which must center upon itself in order to function. I sometimes think
that the energy expended in creating a really imaginative work drains
the humanity out of the artist. If his personal life suffers as a
consequence, his business acumen is even more incidental.
_The Man with the Golden Arm_ was Algren’s great commercial success, and
the harvest was reaped by others. The story is told, or at any rate that
part which has any bearing on this discourse, in a classic letter from
Nelson to Otto Preminger, producer of the movie which bore the title, if
not the imprint, of the novel:
Hotel Vermillion
6162 West Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, California
February 16, 1955
Mr. Otto Preminger
Columbia Studios
1438 Gower Street
Los Angeles, California
Dear Mr. Preminger:
I am advised by your office that arrangements are now under way
to award me the sum of two hundred and three dollars and
seventy-eight cents, spent by myself to proceed, upon your
invitation, to the city of Los Angeles. I find this gesture most
generous, but am compelled to inform you that this money was
spent to no purpose to which you are member. Thank you all the
same.
I am further instructed that arrangements are also under way to
compensate me, at the rate of thirty-five dollars per diem, for
listening to the expression of certain thoughts, after a manner
of speaking, by yourself. These occurred between January 27th
and 31st inclusively. But since these were all, like the novel
about which you wove them, the property of other persons living
or dead, I cannot in conscience honor them by acceptance of such
compensation. Again I am grateful. And again I am instructed
that a check for the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars, in
addition to the above items, is due me from yourself. I assume
this may well be an effort to repay me for some twelve pages of
double-spaced typing I achieved in an effort to discover what in
God’s name you were talking about. Since these pages served only
to confuse you further, no moneys are rightfully due me. Yet
your thoughtfulness does not cease to move me.
Should this concern for me derive from a simple and heartfelt
gratitude for a diversion afforded you for a full week by “an
interesting person,” as you so happily put it when the moment
came for parting, I do not feel you are so much indebted.
Although I did not find in you an interesting person, I did
discover one of arrogance approaching the uncanny. Upon the
basis of mutual amusement, therefore, I am the debtor. And since
you are decidedly more uncanny than I am interesting, I must at
a rough estimate, owe you close to forty dollars.
And forward this sum confident of your satisfaction in alms from
any quarter, however small, and remain
your obedient servant
Nelson Algren
“He jests at scars who never felt a wound.”
5
The Day My Accountant Cried
I dislike being interrupted when I am interesting someone in a book. One
late afternoon while I was engaged in making a sale, my accountant
tiptoed over and stood close to me. I moved away, but he came close
again. I frowned; generally that was enough to frighten him. But not
this time.
“I must speak with you,” he said. “It’s very important.”
“Well, what is it?” I said.
His thin shoulders sagged and when he finally spoke, his voice
contributed to the general impression of a small, furry animal in a
trap. “You are bankrupt,” he squeaked.
My accountant was a limp rag of a man with a lined, ashen face and a
bald head spotted with a few patches of nondescript hair. The color of
his eyes was an odd mixture, neither grey nor brown, and he never met
your gaze, but looked down at your feet or to one side. He wore a grey
suit with a vest that had specially made pockets to contain his
pharmaceutical supplies, including not only pill boxes and bottles, but
his own spoon and a collapsible cup.
Although he was very neat, he bit his fingernails to the quick. Still, I
found his hands fascinating when he added up columns of figures. His
figure 8’s and his 7’s had a special quality about them, a precision
bordering upon elegance.