CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
[Illustration]
_The Great_
American Novel
CHAPTER I
The Fog
[Illustration]
If there is progress then there is a novel. Without progress there is
nothing. Everything exists from the beginning. I existed in the
beginning. I was a slobbering infant. Today I saw nameless grasses--I
tapped the earth with my knuckle. It sounded hollow. It was dry as
rubber. Eons of drought. No rain for fifteen days. No rain. It has never
rained. It will never rain. Heat and no wind all day long better say hot
September. The year has progressed. Up one street down another. It is
still September. Down one street, up another. Still September. Yesterday
was the twenty second. Today is the twenty first. Impossible. Not if it
was last year. But then it wouldn't be yesterday. A year is not as
yesterday in his eyes. Besides last year it rained in the early part of
the month. That makes a difference. It rained on the white goldenrod.
Today being misplaced as against last year makes it seem better to have
white--Such is progress. Yet if there is to be a novel one must begin
somewhere.
Words are not permanent unless the graphite be scraped up and put in a
tube or the ink lifted. Words progress into the ground. One must begin
with words if one is to write. But what then of smell? What then of the
hair on the trees or the golden brown cherries under the black cliffs.
What of the weakness of smiles that leave dimples as much as to say:
forgive me--I am slipping, slipping, slipping into nothing at all. Now
I am not what I was when the word was forming to say what I am. I sit so
on my bicycle and look at you greyly, dimpling because it is September
and I am older than I was. I have nothing to say this minute. I shall
never have anything to do unless there is progress, unless you write a
novel. But if you take me in your arms--why the bicycle will fall and it
will not be what it is now to smile greyly and a dimple is so deep--you
might fall in and never, never remember to write a word to say good-bye
to your cherries. For it is September. Begin with September.
To progress from word to word is to suck a nipple. Imagine saying: My
dear, I am thirsty, will you let me have a little milk--This to love at
first sight. But who do you think I am, says white goldenrod? Of course
there is progress. Of course there are words. But I am thirsty, one
might add. Yes but I love you and besides I have no milk. Oh yes, that
is right. I forgot that we were speaking of words. Yet you cannot deny
that to have a novel one must have milk. Not at the beginning. Granted,
but at the end at least. Yes, yes, at the end. Progress from the mere
form to the substance. Yes, yes, in other words: milk. Milk is the
answer.
But how have milk out of white goldenrod? Why, that was what the Indians
said. The bosom of the earth sprays up a girl balancing, balancing on a
bicycle. Rapidly she passes through the first--the second eight years.
Progress, you note. But September was rainy last year and how can it
ever be dry again unless one go back to the year before that. There are
no words. It cannot be any otherwise than as this is built the bosom of
the earth shrinks back; phosphates. Yet to have a novel--Oh catch up a
dozen good smelly names and find some reason for murder, it will do. But
can you not see, can you not taste, can you not smell, can you not hear,
can you not touch--words? It is words that must progress. Words, white
goldenrod, it is words you are made out of--THAT is why you want what
you haven't got.
Progress is to get. But how can words get.--Let them get drunk. Bah.
Words are words. Fog of words. The car runs through it. The words take
up the smell of the car. Petrol. Face powder, arm pits, food-grease in
the hair, foul breath, clean musk. Words. Words cannot progress. There
cannot be a novel. Break the words. Words are indivisible crystals. One
cannot break them--Awu tsst grang splith gra pragh og bm--Yes, one can
break them. One can make words. Progress? If I make a word I make myself
into a word. Such is progress. I shall make myself into a word. One big
word. One big union. Such is progress. It is a novel. I begin small and
make myself into a big splurging word: I take life and make it into one
big blurb. I begin at my childhood. I begin at the beginning and make
one big--Bah.
What difference is it whether I make the words or take the words. It
makes no difference whatever.
There cannot be a novel. There can only be pyramids, pyramids of words,
tombs. Their warm breasts heave up and down calling for a head to
progress toward them, to fly onward, upon a word that was a pumpkin, now
a fairy chariot, and all the time the thing was rolling backward to the
time when one believed. Hans Anderson didn't believe. He had to pretend
to believe. It is a conspiracy against childhood. It runs backward.
Words are the reverse motion. Words are the flesh of yesterday. Words
roll, spin, flare up, rumble, trickle, foam--Slowly they lose momentum.
Slowly they cease to stir. At last they break up into their letters--Out
of them jumps the worm that was--His hairy feet tremble upon them.
Leaving the meeting room where the Mosquito Extermination Commission had
been holding an important fall conference they walked out on to the
portico of the County Court House Annex where for a moment they remained
in the shadow cast by the moon. A fog had arisen in which the egg-shaped
white moon was fixed--so it seemed. They walked around the side of the
old-fashioned wooden building--constructed in the style of the fine
residences of sixty years ago and coming to the car he said: Go around
that side as I will have to get in here by the wheel. The seat was wet
with dew and cold--after the exceptionally hot day. They sat on it
nevertheless. The wind-shield was opaque with the water in minute
droplets on it--through which the moon shone with its inadequate light.
That is, our eyes being used to the sun the moon's light is inadequate
for us to see by. But certain bats and owls find it even too strong,
preferring the starlight. The stars also were out.
Turning into the exit of the parking space he stopped the car and began
to wipe the wind-shield with his hand. Take this rag said the other,
with one hand already in his trowser pocket. So the glass was wiped on
both sides, the top and the bottom pane and the cloth--which looked a
good deal like a handkerchief--was returned to the owner--who put it
back where it came from not seeming to mind that it was wet and dirty.
But of course the man is a mechanic in a certain sense and doesn't care.
On the highway they began to encounter the fog. It seemed in the rush of
the car to come and meet them. It came suddenly, with a rush and in a
moment nothing could be seen but the white billows of water crossed in
front by the flares of the headlights. And so it went all the way home,
sometimes clearer, sometimes so thick he had to stop, nearly--ending in
his own bed-room with his wife's head on the pillow in the perfectly
clear electric light. The light shone brightest on the corner of her
right eye, which was nearest it, also on the prominences of her face.
Her right arm was under her head. She had been reading. The magazine
Vanity Fair, which he had bought thinking of her, lay open on the
coverlet. He looked at her and she at him. He smiled and she, from long
practice, began to read him, progressing rapidly until she said: You
can't fool me.
He became very angry but understood at once that she had penetrated his
mystery, that she saw he was stealing in order to write words. She
smiled again knowingly. He became furious.