Miss Lonelyhearts

Contents

MISS LONELYHEARTS, HELP ME, HELP ME

MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE DEAD PAN

MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE LAMB

MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE FAT THUMB

MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE CLEAN OLD MAN

MISS LONELYHEARTS AND MRS. SHRIKE

MISS LONELYHEARTS ON A FIELD TRIP

MISS LONELYHEARTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP

MISS LONELYHEARTS IN THE COUNTRY

MISS LONELYHEARTS RETURNS

MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE CRIPPLE

MISS LONELYHEARTS PAYS A VISIT

MISS LONELYHEARTS ATTENDS A PARTY

MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE PARTY DRESS

MISS LONELYHEARTS HAS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

The Miss
Lonelyhearts
of The New York Post-Dispatch (Are-you-in-trouble?
--Do-you-need-advice?--Write-to-Miss-
Lonelyhearts
-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and
stared at a piece of white cardboard. On it a prayer had been printed by
Shrike, the feature editor.

"Soul of Miss L, glorify me.

Body of Miss L, nourish me

Blood of Miss L, intoxicate me.

Tears of Miss
L,
wash me.

Oh good Miss L, excuse my plea,

And hide me in your heart,

And defend me from mine enemies.

Help me, Miss L, help me,
help
me.

In
saecula
saeculorum
.
Amen."

Although the deadline was less than
a quarter of an hour away, he was still working on his leader. He had gone as
far as: "Life is worth while, for it is full of dreams and peace,
gentleness and ecstasy, and faith that burns like a clear white flame on a grim
dark altar." But he found it impossible to continue. The letters were no
longer funny. He could not go on finding the same joke funny thirty times a day
for months on end. And on most days he received more than thirty letters, all
of them alike, stamped from the dough of suffering with a heart-shaped cookie
knife.

On his desk were piled those he had
received this morning. He started through them again, searching for some clue
to a sincere answer.

Dear
Miss
Lonelyhearts
--

I
am in such pain I
dont
know what to do sometimes I
think I will kill myself my kidneys hurt so much. My husband thinks no woman
can be a good catholic and not have children
irregardless
of the pain. I was married honorable from our church but I never knew what
married life meant as I never was told about man and wife. My grandmother never
told me and she was the only mother I had but made a big mistake by not telling
me as it
dont
pay to be innocent and is only a big
disappointment. I have 7 children in 12 yrs and ever since the last 2 I have
been so sick. I was operated on twice and my husband promised no more children
on the doctors advice as he said I might die but when I got back from the
hospital he broke his promise and now I am going to have a baby and I
dont
think I can stand it my kidneys hurt so much. I am so
sick and scared because I
cant
have an abortion on
account of being a catholic and my husband so religious. I cry all the time it
hurts so much and I
dont
know what to do.

Yours
respectfully,

Sick-of-it-all

Miss
Lonelyhearts
threw the letter into an open drawer and lit a cigarette.

Dear Miss
Lonelyhearts
--

I
am sixteen years old now and I
dont
know what to do
and would appreciate it if you could tell me what to do. When I was a little
girl it was not so bad because I got used to the kids on the block
makeing
fun of me, but now I would like to have boy friends
like the other girls and go out on Saturday
nites
,
but no boy will take me because I was born without a nose--although I am a good
dancer and have a nice shape and my father buys me pretty clothes.

I
sit and look at myself all day and cry. I have a big hole in the middle of my
face that scares people even myself so I
cant
blame
the boys for not wanting to take me out. My mother loves me, but
she
crys
terrible when she looks
at me.

What
did I do to deserve such a terrible bad fate? Even if I did do some bad things
I
didnt
do any before I was a year old and I was born
this way. I asked Papa and he says he
doesnt
know,
but that maybe I did something in the other world before I was born or that
maybe I was being punished for his sins. I
dont
believe that because he is a very nice man. Ought
I
commit suicide?

Sincerely
yours,

Desperate

The cigarette was imperfect and refused to draw. Miss
Lonelyhearts
took it out of his mouth and stared at it
furiously. He fought himself quiet,
then
lit another
one.

Dear
Miss
Lonelyhearts
--

I
am writing to you for my little sister Grade because something
awfull
hapened
to her, and I am
afraid to tell mother about it. I am 15 years old and Gracie is 13 and we live
in Brooklyn. Gracie is deaf and dumb and
biger
than
me but not very smart on account of being deaf and dumb. She plays on the roof
of our house and
dont
go to school except to deaf and
dumb school twice a week on
tuesdays
and
thursdays
. Mother makes her play on the roof
because we
dont
want her to get run over as she
aint
very smart. Last week a man came on the roof and did
something dirty to her. She told me about it and I
dont
know what to do as I am afraid to tell mother on account of her being liable to
beat Grade up. I am afraid that Gracie is going to have a baby and I listened
to her
stomack
last night for a long time to see if I
could hear the baby but I couldn't. If I tell mother she will beat Gracie up
awfull
because I am the only one who loves her and last
time when she tore her dress they Joked her in the closet for 2 days and if the
boys on the
blok
hear about it they will say dirty
things like they did on Peewee
Conors
sister the time
she got caught in the lots. So please what would you do if the same
hapened
in your family.

Yours
truly,

Harold
S.

He stopped reading. Christ was the
answer, but, if he did not want to get sick, he had to stay away from the
Christ business. Besides, Christ was Shrike's particular joke. "Soul of
Miss L, glorify me.
Body of Miss L, save me.
Blood
of..." He turned to his typewriter.

Although his cheap clothes had too
much style, he still looked like the son of a Baptist minister. A beard would
become him, would accent his Old-Testament look. But even without a beard no
one could fail to recognize the New England puritan. His forehead was high and
narrow. His nose was long and fleshless. His bony chin was shaped and cleft
like a hoof. On seeing him for the first time, Shrike had smiled and said,
"The Susan
Chesters
, the Beatrice
Fairfaxes
and the Miss
Lonelyhearts
are the priests of twentieth-century America."

A copy boy came up to tell him that
Shrike wanted to know if the stuff was ready. He bent over the typewriter and
began pounding its keys.

But before he had written a dozen
words, Shrike leaned over his shoulder. "The same old stuff," Shrike
said. "Why don't you give them something new and hopeful? Tell them about
art. Here, I'll dictate:

"
Art Is a Way Out.

"Do not let life overwhelm you.
When the old paths are choked with the debris of failure, look for newer and
fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering. As Mr.
Polnikoff
exclaimed through his fine Russian beard,
when, at the age of eighty-six, he gave up his business to learn Chinese, '
We
are, as yet, only at the beginning...

"
Art Is One of Life's Richest Offerings.

"For those who have not the
talent to create, there is appreciation.
For those...

"Go on from there."

When Miss
Lonelyhearts
quit work, he found
that the weather had turned warm and that the air smelt as though it had been
artificially heated. He decided to walk to
Delehanty's
speakeasy for a drink. In order to get there, it was necessary to cross a
little park.

He entered the park at the North
Gate and swallowed mouthfuls of the heavy shade that curtained its arch. He
walked into the shadow of a lamp-post that lay on the path like a spear. It
pierced him like a spear.

As far as he could discover, there
were no signs of spring. The decay that covered the surface of the mottled
ground was not the kind in which life generates. Last year, he remembered, May
had failed to quicken these soiled fields. It had taken all the brutality of
July to torture a few green spikes through the exhausted dirt.

What the little park needed, even
more than he did, was a drink. Neither alcohol nor rain would do. To-morrow, in
his column, he would ask Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate,
Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest of his correspondents to
come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up,
flowers that smelled of feet.

"Ah, humanity..." But he
was heavy with shadow and the joke went into a dying fall. He tried to break
its fall by laughing at himself.

Why laugh at
himself
,
however, when Shrike was waiting at the speakeasy to do a much better job?
"Miss
Lonelyhearts
, my friend, I advise you to
give your readers stones. When they ask for bread
don't
give them crackers as does the Church, and don't, like the State, tell them to
eat cake. Explain that man cannot live by bread alone and give them stones.
Teach them to pray each morning: `Give us this day our daily stone.'"

He had given his readers many
stones; so many, in fact, that he had only one left--the stone that had formed
in his gut.

Suddenly tired, he sat down on a
bench.
If he could only throw the stone.
He searched
the sky for a target. But the gray sky looked as if it had been rubbed with a
soiled eraser. It held no angels, flaming crosses, olive-bearing doves, wheels
within wheels. Only a newspaper struggled in the air like a kite with a broken
spine. He got up and started again for the speakeasy.

Delehanty's
was in the cellar of a brownstone house that differed from its more respectable
neighbors by having an armored door. He pressed a concealed button and a little
round window opened in its center. A blood-shot eye appeared, glowing like a
ruby in an antique iron ring.