Algren at Sea (59 page)

At the moment, this curious fellow had a salad in hand and was trying to get the attention of someone behind one of the little windows. Something had gone wrong at Horn & Hardart's.

The girl who was witnessing this scene beside me was from out of town. She was from so far out of town that she called the place “
L' Automatique.
”

“Does your friend have a difficulty?” she wanted to know. For the Diagnostician of a Diseased Culture had now put his salad down as if it were contagious. He was dissenting from somebody who was behind the window; judging by his expression, his dissent was sharp.

“He says that American culture is a pudding of mediocrity,” I reported, “if you call that ‘a difficulty.'”

Now he picked up the salad he'd put down and tried to insert it into the open window—it shut so fast he had just time to withdraw his fingers. But the fringe of his beard caught and there he was, trapped with a salad in one hand. He was a tall man and he'd been caught bending. He
rapped the glass and waved the salad until the window was opened, releasing him. Then it shut. He inserted a nickel. It reopened, he drew out a second salad and returned to our table, carrying both.

Yet he appeared perfectly composed.

“Is it not permitted to make exchange of salads in
L'Automatique?
” the girl asked about the rules.

“When God is dead,
all
is permitted,” the critic quoted Dostoevsky contentedly; in a kindly tone.

“Providing one puts in an extra nickel,” I pointed out.

He was a critic with a beard that appeared to be more of an appendage fastened with Elmer's Glue-All than anything growing from skin. He was a de-corpuscled diagnostician who preferred riding the subway to taking taxis unless he was pursuing a celebrity. His pleasures were few and riding in a taxi with a celebrity was an experience as rich to him as riding a passenger train.

Bartenders regarded him without enthusiasm because The Dram Shop Act discouraged them from throwing him out. They didn't mind his mixing Coca-Cola and Scotch so much as they did his using half a case of Cokes to one shot of Scotch. Celebrities seldom minded him because they were never sure which one he was.

“What kind of writer is he?” my friend inquired, after the critic had left his two salads for us to guard, pending his return from another visit to the little windows.

“A kind difficult to define,” I decided, “his field seems to be that of deriding Philistines for exploiting the
avant-garde.
”

“And
do
Philistines exploit the
avant-garde?
” she inquired.

“No. The
avant-garde
exploits the Philistines.”

The Diagnostician was now in a dispute with the handle of a faucet that pours a nickel's worth of milk into a nickel's worth of coffee, this combination then being purchasable for a dime. Assuming that a man who could measure an entire culture could tell at a glance that he'd gotten only nine cents' worth, the faucet was obviously in the wrong.

“Is it not against the rules, exploitation?” the girl asked, eyeing the begoggled wretch suspiciously.

“It is,” I tried to bring her up to date—“but they keep changing the rules. It used to be
against
the rules for an artist to become rich. He was
supposed
to live in extreme poverty and remain unknown until he died of
exposure. Upon which event his fame would become widespread and great sums would be made out of the beauty found in his paintings or his books or his songs. Now he doesn't have to die to become famous. He doesn't, in fact, have to create a work of beauty. In fact he doesn't even have to be good. All he has to be today is become
avant-garde.

“You see, so many people have become rich, and so few people are recognized
avant-gardists,
that it is like a country run by electricity where there is a shortage of electricians. There are simply not enough
avant-gardists
to go around.

“So many people have become rich so easily that they can't get enough of books that tell them how rotten they are. This provides a neat way for the
avant-gardist
not only to denounce culture, but to get rich by doing it. And the Philistines are so afraid that someone will catch them
not
applauding, that a writer, like our friend, not only makes money by being against
kitsch
but earns a reputation for being
avant-gardist
too.”

“I do not understand this
kitsch,
” the girl admitted, “is it the pudding of no plums?”

“Not exactly,” I told her. “It is a pudding that
pretends
to have plums. It is any song, or play, or book, or painting, or film that pretends to be profound although it is shallow, and true although it is false.”

“Then it is good that your friend is against
kitsch—
is it not?”

“It would be
if
he were. But where
kitsch
comes in, he is the country's widest distributor of it.”

“Again I do not understand.”

“I will try to be more precise,” I promised her, “
par example:
our friend expresses extreme distress at the thing that Hollywood writers do to a good novel, when adapting it to film, which they term ‘licking a book into shape.' He claims that what this means is to drain the novel of all reality and offer its corpse on the screen.”

“This is a dreadful deed indeed,” the girl exclaimed.

“Be patient,” I reproached her, “I am still
par-exampling.
Because at this dreadful-deed-indeed called ‘licking a book into shape,' no writer in America is more skillful than is our friend.”

“I cannot bear to hear more,” she whispered in my ear.

“Try all the same,” I asked her, “you will be fascinated by its unimportance.”

I was keeping an eye on our Diagnostician—whom we shall henceforward
refer to, Dear Reader, simply as ‘Macdonald,' as that is shorter than ‘Diagnostician'—and saw he was now tied up in an argument with the woman who changes quarters into nickels. I assumed he was trying to get six.

“
Par example
”
:
I continued, “during the Spanish Civil War an American actor named Flynn arrived at the Spanish border accompanied by his studio's publicity department. He was photographed in a Spanish Republican militiaman's uniform, being greeted by a Spanish Republican militiaman, and the photograph was sent to newspapers all over the world with the story that the actor was now fighting against Facism. When the stunt was over he returned to his yacht, anchored in French waters, and had a party.”

“I am disgusted with your Flynn,” the girl assured me.

“Don't bother,” I suggested. “For one thing, he is dead; and, for a second, he wasn't
my
Flynn.”

“Then what is the point of telling me?” she wanted to know. She was a child of a strong curiosity.

“The point is that when Hemingway became just as dead as Flynn, and Macdonald made it his business to sum up the man's life, it wasn't necessary for him to compare Flynn's adventure in Spain with Hemingway's in order to create the impression that there was no difference. The picture of Flynn fighting Fascism by shaking hands with a Republican militiaman and that of Hemingway doing the same thing, made it necessary for Macdonald only to comment about how much Hemingway loved being photographed.

“
Kitsch
is a way of implying when one lacks the courage to speak directly. He thus created an impression that Hemingway, too, was faking. All he omitted was that Hemingway was on the Spanish front, in the worst part of the fighting between Madrid and Barcelona for two years. All he omitted was that Hemingway endured battle, wrote the best dispatches on the fighting, assisted on a movie called
Spanish Earth
and, later, wrote a novel about that war which brought the necessity of defeating Fascism in Spain to multitudes in America.”

“What was the pudding-man doing at that time?” she wanted to know.

“An excellent question,” I congratulated her, “he was discovering a way to be a dissenter against the way we live and at the same time to earn good dividends.”

“How is
this
done?” she asked me.

“I'm
trying
to tell you,” I scolded her—“it is done by being extremely careful about disapproving of the society in which one lives while at the same time being
very
angry at its art. By doing this one is not at all likely to be subpoenaed by a Congressional Committee asking what organizations one belongs to. Congressmen do not consider organizations of intellectuals to be dangerous. In another country, yes. Not here. Here it is the men who organize unions that must be watched. And by knowing this, Macdonald is able to be against things as they are in
Dissent
and for things as they are in
Encounter,
and to make as much money by saying things
against
them one week, as he does by taking them all back the next. This he has learned from watching Hollywood writers lick a book into shape. Only he goes farther—he knows how to lick a
writer
into shape.”

“He sounds terribly confused,” the girl observed.

“On the contrary,” I insisted, “he is very clear-headed.”

“But does not this kind of process have a poor effect on the writing of the
avant-garde?
”

“It leaves the
avant-garde
with no distinction between themselves and the Philistinism except to change their own name to ‘hipsters' and that of the Philistines to ‘squares.' And makes it possible to have both garlic dressing and roquefort.”

“In the pudding of mediocrity,” the girl said thoughtfully—and this was a most thoughtful girl—“I think Macdonald is no plum.”

At which moment the Diagnostician materialized beside us with a face full of explanations.

“I didn't mind paying the extra nickel,” he advised us, “but I prefer roquefort to garlic and it looked to me like an even trade.” He drew the salads closer, for purposes of comparison. “How do they look to you?”

I failed to see the trap.

“Frankly,” I told him, “the garlic salad looks better.”

Immediately he put it in front of me. “I can't eat both,” he assured me, “it's only twenty cents.”

Had it not been for wanting to make a strong impression on the girl I
might
have pushed it back. Instead, I found a twenty-five-cent piece and handed it to Macdonald.

He pocketed it and evaded my gaze while a triumphant flush rose in his cheeks at the realization that he had recouped the difference in price between garlic and roquefort.

Only he hadn't. I fixed him with an eye so steely that at last he reached into a small dime-store wallet, unhooked a brass clasp and brought forth a nickel.

He ate the roquefort with a disappointed air. And left us, immediately after, with the same aura of silent reproach. There was no doubt we were both
kitschers
now.

Yet I could not help but marvel at what I had seen: a man recognized as an arbiter of literary style who himself did not possess ordinary grace sufficient to see him through a meal in an Automat.

“In
L'Automatique,
” my friend observed after he had left, “
all
seems
automatique.
”

Well, I
told
you she was from out of town.

“Never let a woman get so worldly-wise that she loses her leadership,” Smith glanced up at me from the table where he'd been shuffling a beat-up deck, “I took a seventeen-year-old bum named Gracie and made a fast-stepping queen out of her, but she lacked leadership. The minute you let a woman feel she don't need you to lean on, she's off and away.”

“What's our next port?” I wanted to know.

“Calcutta. Gracie got so near to perfect I changed her name to Old Faithful. She kept herself that clean, and kept our apartment that neat, she cooked so good, and done whatever I told her without asking questions, and all the while bringing in five hundred to seven-fifty a week, I had to belt her now and then for being
too
perfect—what else
was
there to belt her for?”

“Was she good-looking?” I asked.

“The doll of the world. One hundred and four pounds of redheaded ravishment, that was all.”

“You should have married her,” I suggested.

“The truth of the matter is, Mister,” Smith assured me, “was that taking out papers on Gracie was
exactly
what I had in mind. When a hustling woman has had as many chances as Gracie had to put me in the pen and didn't, she deserves to work out of a home instead of a bar.”

“How's your boil?” I inquired.

“You see, I owned the bar Gracie was working out of—and it wasn't a bar—it was a taproom.”

“I didn't know there was a difference,” I admitted.

“You would if you had to run one in Santa Vaca,” Smith informed me, “where all the bars had to shut down at twelve o'clock but a taproom could stay open till four. That made a difference when a ship was docked in town. That was why I called my place
The Fantail—
like it was someplace
you just hung around off duty. I know you think I'm a bum, sir, but that's only because you met me at sea. On the beach I'm a first-class operator and I know my trade.”

“Every time I talk to you you have a new trade,” I had to point out to him.

“I had a three-piece combo going for me, and the drummer had one of those rubber deals we used to slip over a gearshift for when things got out of hand. The piano player wore knucks. The trumpet man was unarmed because he was a sissy. Gracie kept a pound jar of Pond's cold cream in her handbag, and we had an old spade called Bull who took care of the men's room. Bull was very dignified and wore a high white collar and tie, but I never called on him except in ex
treme
emergency because he was on probation and hadn't ought to be working where liquor was sold. We were
ready.
”