My Life as a Man (19 page)

Joan
’
s prompt reply:

Thanks for the long letter and the two new stories, three artful documents springing from the same hole in your head. When
that one drilled she really struck pay dirt. Is there no bottom to your guilty conscience? Is there no other source available for your art? A few observations on literature and life—i. You have no reason to hide in the woods like a fugitive from justice. 2. You did not kill her, in any way, shape, or form. Unless there is something I don
’
t know. 3. To have asked a pretty girl to have intercourse with a zucchini in your presence is morally inconsequential. Everybody has his whims. You probably made her day (if that was you). You announce it in your
“
Salad Days
”
story with all the bravado of a naughty boy who knows he has done wrong and now awaits with bated breath his punishment.
Wrong,
Peppy, is an ice pick, not a garden vegetable;
wrong
is by force or with children. 4. You do disapprove of me, as compared with Morris certainly; but that, as they say, is your problem, baby. (And brother Moe
’
s. And whoever else
’
s. Illustrative anecdote: About six weeks ago,
imme
diat
ely
after the Sunday supplement here ran a photo story on our new ski house at Squaw Valley, I got a midnight phone call from a mysterious admirer. A lady.
“
Joan Rosen?
”
“
Yes.
”
“
I
’
m going to expose you to the world for what you are.
”
“
Yes? What is that?
”
“
A Jewish girl from the Bronx! Why do you try to hide it, Joan? It
’
s written all over you, you phony bitch!
”
) So then, I don
’
t take either of those make-believe siblings for myself. I know you can
’
t write about me—you can
’
t make pleasure credible. And a working marriage that works is about as congenial to your talent and interests as the subject of outer space. You know I admire your work (and I do like these two stories, when I can ignore what they imply about your state of mind), but the fact is that you couldn
’
t create a Kitty and a Levin if your life depended on it. Your imagination (hand in hand with your life) moves in the other direction. 5. Reservation (
“
Courting Disaster
”
): I never heard of anyone killing herself with a can opener. Awfully gruesome and oddly arbitrary, unless I am missing something. 6. Idle curiosity: was
Maureen
seduced by her father? She never struck me as broken in that way. 7. After the
“
nonfiction narrative
”
on the Subject, what next? A saga in heroic couplets? Suggestion: Why don
’
t you plug up the well and drill for inspiration elsewhere? Do yourself a favor (if those words mean anything to you) and FORGET IT. Move on! Come West, young man! P.S. Two
enclosures are for your edification (and taken together, right up your fictional alley—if you want to see unhappiness, you ought to see this marriage in action). Enclosed note #
1
is to me from Lane Coutell,
Bridges
’
new, twenty-four-year-old associate editor (good-looking and arrogant and, in a way, brilliant; more so right now than is necessary), who was here with his wife for supper and read the stories. He and the magazine would (his
“
reservations
”
notwithstanding) give anything (except money, of which there
’
s none) to publish them, though I made it clear that he
’
d have to contact you about that. I just wanted to know what someone intelligent who didn
’
t know your true story would make of what you
’
ve made out of it here. Enclosed note #2 is from Frances Coutell, his wife, who runs
Bridges
’
office now. A delicate, washed-out beauty of twenty-three, bristling with spiritual needs; also a romantic masochist who, as you will surmise, has developed a crush on you, not least because she doesn
’
t like you that much. Fiction does different things to different people, much like matrimony.

#1

Dear Joan: As you know I wasn
’
t one of those who was taken by your brother
’
s celebrated first novel. I found it much too proper a book, properly decorous and constrained on the formal side, and properly momentous (and much too pointed) in presenting its Serious Jewish Moral Issue. Obviously it was mature for a first novel—too obviously: the work of a gifted literature student strait-jacketed by the idea that fiction is the means for proving righteousness and displaying intelligence; the book seems to me very much a relic of the fifties. The Abraham and Isaac motif, rich with Kierkegaardian overtones, reeks (if I may say so) of those English departments located in the upper reaches of the Himalayas. What I like about the new stories, and why to my mind they represent a tremendous advance over the novel, is that they seem to me a deliberate and largely conscious two-pronged attack upon the prematurely grave and high-minded author of
A Jewish Father.
As I read it, in
“
Salad Days
”
the attack is frontal, head-on, and accomplished by means of social
satire, and, more notably, what
I
’
d call tender pornography, a very different thing, say, from the pornography of a Sade or a Terry Southern. For the author of that solemn first novel, a story like
“
Salad Days
”
is nothing less than blasphemous. He is to be congratulated heartily for triumphing (at least here) over all that repressive piety and fashionable Jewish angst.
“
Courting Disaster
”
is a more complicated case (and as a result not so successful, in a purely literary sense). As I would
like
to read it, the story is actually a disguised critical essay by Tarnopol on his own overrated first book, a commentary and a judgment on all that
principledness
that is
A Jewish Father
’
s
subject and its downfall. Whether Tarnopol intended it or not, I see in Zuckerman
’
s devotion to Lydia (its joylessness, its sexless-ness, its scrupulosity, its madly ethical motive) a kind of allegory of Tarnopol and his Muse. To the degree that this is so, to the degree that the character of Zuckerman em
both
es and represents the misguided and morbid
“
moral
”
imagination that produced
A ]ewish Father,
it is fascinating; to the degree that Tarnopol is back on the angst kick, with all that implies about
“
moving
”
the reader, I think the story is retrograde, dull, and boring, and suggests that the conventional (rabbinical) side of this writer still has a stranglehold on what is reckless and intriguing in his talent. But whatever my reservations,
“
Courting Disaster
”
is well worth publishing, certainly in tandem with
“
Salad Days,
”
a story that seems to me the work of a brand new Tarnopol, who, having objectified the high-minded moralist in him (and, hopefully, banished him to Europe forevermore, there to dwell in noble sadness with all the other
“
cultural monuments and literary landmarks
”
), has begun at last to flirt with the playful, the perverse, and the disreputable in himself. If Sharon Shatzky is your brother
’
s new Muse, and a zucchini her magic wand, we may be in for something more valuable than still more fiction that is
“
moving.
”
Lane.

#2

Joan: My two cents worth, only because the story L. admires most seems to me smug and vicious and infuriating, all the more so for being so
clever
and
winning.
It is pure sadistic trash and I pray (actually) that
Bridges
doesn
’
t print i
t. Art is long, but the life of
a little magazine is short, and much too short for
this.
I hate what he does with that suburban college girl—and I don
’
t even mean what Zuckerman (the predictable prodigal son who
majors
in English) does but what the author does, which is just to twist her arm around behind her back and say,
“
You are not my equal, you can never be my
equal—understand?
”
Who does he think he is, anyway? And why would he want to be such a thing? How could the man who wrote
“
Courting Disaster
”
want to write a heartless little story like that? And vice versa? Because the long story is absolutely
heartrending
and I think (contrary to L.
’
s cold-blooded analysis) that
this
is why it works utterly. I was moved to tears by it (but then I didn
’
t perform brain surgery on it) and moved to the most aching admiration for the man who could just
conceive
such a story. The wife, the daughter, the husband are painfully true (I
’
m sure because he made me sure), and I shall never forget them. And Zuckerman
here
is completely true too, sympathetic, interesting, a believable observer and center of feeling, all the things he has to be. In a strange way they were all sympathetic to me, even the awful ones. Life is awful. Yours, Franny. P.S. I apologize for saying that something your brother wrote is hateful. I don
’
t know him. And I don
’
t think I want to. There are enough Jekyll and Hydes around here as it is. You
’
re an older woman, tell me something. What
’
s the matter with men? What do they
want?

My brother Morris, to whom copies of my latest stories were also sent in response to a letter inquiring about my welfare, had his own trenchant comments to make on
“
Courting Disaster-comments not so unlike Joan
’
s.

What is it with you Jewish writers? Madeleine Herzog, Deborah Rojack, the curie-pie castrator in
After the Fall,
and isn
’
t the desirable shiksa of
A New Life
a kvetch and ti
tl
ess in the bargain? And now, for the further delight of the rabbis and the reading public, Lydia Zuckerman, that Gentile tomato. Chicken soup in every pot, and a Grushenka in every garage. With all the Dark Ladies to choose from, you luftmenschen can really pick
‘
em.
Peppy, why are you still wasting your talent on that Dead End Kid? Leave her to Heaven, okay? I
’
m speaking at Boston University at the end o
f
the month, not that far from you. If you
’
re still up on the mountain, come down and stay at the Commander with me. My subject is
“
Rationality, Planning, and Gratification Deferral.
”
You could stand hearing about
a
and
b;
as for c, would you, a leading contender for the tide in the highly competitive Jewish Novelist Division, agree to give a black belt demonstration in same to the assembled students of social behavior? Peppy,
enough with her already!

Back in
1
960, following a public lecture I had delivered (my first) at Berkeley, Joan and Alvin gave a party for me at the house they had then up on a ridge in Palo Alto. Maureen and I had just returned to the U.S. from our year at the American Academy in Rome, and I had accepted a two-year appointment as
“
writer-in-residence
”
at the University of Wisconsin. In the previous twelve months I had become (according to an article in the Sunday
Times
book section)
“
the golden boy of American literature
”
; for
A Jewish Father,
my first novel, I had received the Prix de Rome of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim grant of thirty-eight hundred dollars, and then my invitation to teach at Wisconsin. I myself had expected no less, back then; it was not my good fortune that surprised me at the age of twenty-seven.