Erasure (40 page)

“What if their lawyers say no.”

“They won’t say no.”

After a pause. “And what did you say to Morgenstein?”

“Nothing really.”

“Well, the guy’s in love with you. He’s scared to death of you, but he said, ‘
That fuckin’ guy’s da real thing.
‘”

“He’s right.”

Rothko: I’m sick of painting these damn rectangles.

Resnais: Don’t you see that you’re tracing the painting’s physical limits? Your kind of seeming impoverishment becomes a sort of adventure in the art of elimination. The background and the foreground are your details and they render each other neutral. The one negates the other and so oddly we are left with only details, which in fact are not there.

Rothko: But what’s the bottom line?

Resnais: The idiots are buying it.

Rothko: That is it, isn’t it?

Resnais: I’m afraid so. They won’t watch my films and believe me, my art is no better for the neglect.

Rothko: And no worse, Alain.

Yul: They say you can have the title change if you spell it with a PH.

Me: P-huck. Why would I spell it with a PH?

Yul: They say it won’t be as offensive on the jacket.

Me: The hell it won’t. Fuck with an F or they can p-huck off.

(LATER)

Yul: They said okay.

Me: That’s fucking great.

I visited Mother every day for the first three weeks. The drive to Columbia wasn’t so long and it made for a healthy break in my boredom. I would awake each morning, piddle around in the garage-turned-workshop, go for a long walk, sit down at my desk for several hours and try to construct a new novel that would redeem my lost literary soul, then get in the car to go see Mother. Once I was back home I would read, then torture myself about work. I was lonely, angrier than I had been in a long time, angrier than when I was an angry youth, but now I was rich and angry. I realized how much easier it was to be angry when one is rich. Of course, there was the accompanying guilt and the feeling stupid for feeling guilty, what I was told was one of two common intellectual’s diseases—the other being diarrhea.

Mother was more out than in lately, but the staff kept a close watch and I was confident that she was safe. The irony was that as her mind failed, her body became healthier, she even put on a few pounds and her hand strength was greater than it had been in years. The doctor told me that it would be a short-lived irony. Of course, he didn’t put it that way. He said, “Her body won’t be that way for long.” He said it as if to reassure me, as if the incongruity of her mental and physical states should be more offensive than her complete and total decay.

When she was herself, we listened to music and talked fancifully about going into the city to hear something at the Kennedy. Then she would drift, rather peaceably, off to sleep. It was all very sad and I more than once sat behind the wheel of the car and cried.

The call came in the morning and it was basically what I needed—something to do. Carl Brunt was the director of the National Book Association, the NBA, which sponsored the so-called major award in fiction each year, called simply and pretentiously
The Book Award.

“Your name came up as a possible judge for the award,” Brunt said.

“I’m flattered.”

“Personally, I’d really like to have you as a judge. There will be five of you and about three hundred novels and collections of stories.”

I listened.

“We don’t pay much. A couple of thousand and travel to New York for the ceremony. Your library will be greatly fattened.”

“That’s fine.”

“Are you interested?”

I detested awards, but as I complained endlessly about the direction of American letters, when presented with an opportunity to affect it, how could I say no? So I said, “Yes.”

“Well, that was easy.”

“Who are the other judges?”

“I haven’t lined all of them up yet, but Wilson Harnet has agreed to be the chair of the committee. Do you know him?”

“Yes, I do. He should be good.”

“Well, this is great,” Brunt said. “I’m looking forward to working with you. And of course keep this to yourself until we announce the panel.”

“Certainly.”

“Great.”

The Judges

Wilson Harnet
(chair): Author of six novels. His most recent book was a work of creative nonfiction called
Time is Running Out,
about his wife who was diagnosed with cancer. As it turned out, his wife did not die and all the secrets of theirs that he revealed led her to divorce him and so the literary community eagerly awaited his forthcoming book titled
My Mistake.
A professor at the University of Alabama.

Ailene Hoover:
Author of two novels and a collection of short stories. Her book of stories,
Trivial Pursuits,
won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her novel,
Minutia,
reached four on the
NY Times
bestseller list. A resident of upstate New York (apparently all of it).

Thomas Tomad:
Author of five collections of stories. Among them,
The Night They Came, A Night in Jail, The Night Has Eyes.
His work was praised by the American Association of Incarcerated People Who Write. Also the senior editor of an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, Living Cell Books, specializing in books by lifers. From San Francisco, California.

Jon Paul Sigmarsen:
A Minnesota-based writer. Author of three novels and three books of nature writing. Won several awards for his
Living with the Muskellunge.
Host of a literary talk show aired on PBS in St. Paul called
With All This Snow, Why Not Read?

Thelonious Ellison:
Author of five books. Widely unread experimental stories and novels. Considered dense and often inaccessible. Best known for his novel
The Second Failure.
A lonely man, seemingly having shed all his friends. Visits his mother daily though she cannot remember who he is. Cannot talk to his brother because he is a nut. Cannot speak to his sister because she is dead. Too mystified to actually be depressed. Likes to fish and work with wood. Looking for single woman interested in same. Lives in nation’s capital.

We five judges were introduced during a teleconference and the other four were decent and reasonable enough, as people are wont to seem at first meetings, especially over the phone.

Harnet, the chair, sounded as if he were smoking a pipe, not that something was in fact in his mouth, but as if he were tasting his breath. “We have an arduous and taxing task facing us, colleagues,” he said. “They tell me we’ve more like four hundred books coming to us.”

“Oh, good heavens,” Ailene Hoover said. Her voice that of an older woman. “I’m just finishing a book myself.”

Thomas Tomad said, “Surely we’re not expected to read every word of every book. We do have lives. I can’t be cooped up in the house all winter long.”

“I think a lot of the books you’ll be able to dismiss after the first couple of sentences,” Harnet said. “Of course, if one of those books ends up on another judge’s list, you’ll have to go back to it.”

“I’m not reading any of that experimental shit,” Hoover said.

“I’m sure we’ll discover each other’s tastes and show due respect,” Harnet said.

Jon Paul Sigmarsen laughed and said, “I plan to do a lot of my reading while ice fishing.”

“How much ice do you usually catch?” Tomad said.

Tomad and Sigmarsen laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Hoover asked.

“I have a question,” Sigmarsen said. “How does one judge a novel against a collection of stories? I mean, if a novel has a bad chapter, then it’s a flawed novel. But if all the stories in a book are great except one, then it’s still a great book. Do you see what I mean, what I’m getting at?”

“That’s a good question,” Tomad said.

“What question is that?” Hoover asked.

“About stories and novels,” Harnet said.

“Oh, yes, I suppose we’re to read them both,” Hoover said.

“Ellison, you haven’t said anything,” Hoover said. “Ellison?”

“I’m here.”

“What do you think?”