To Be Courteous to Women

As they walked, they talked. "Do you know what I like about our Government? I like its nickname, Uncle Silly."

"Can I quote you?"

"Why not?"

"I mean, it might make trouble for you -- more trouble, that is -- although it would make a livelier story, too."

"Anything I say you can quote. There is no off-the-record with me. Just because I owe Uncle Silly a lot of money doesn't mean I've got to call him Uncle Sam."

"How much do you owe?"

"I haven't got the exact figures, but I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $11,000,000, or 11,000,000 buttons, or 11,000,000 something or other."

"How do you expect to make the money?"

"I'm on my way to Yancey right now, and you know who he is, I presume."

"I do. Or at any rate I know who he was. He was the white-haired boy of the movie business until six or seven years ago. He was the producer of a lot of great movies, and two or three times as many stinkers. He's still producing for the same lot, working out of Paris. Do you think he'll ever make a comeback?"

"A comeback to what?"

"Do you think he'll ever make a great movie again?"

"Why do you imagine he might not?"

"Well, he hasn't made one in six or seven years, and how much time do you need?"

"Two minutes?"

"How do you mean? Two minutes?"

"Doesn't a thing like that have to begin out of a condition that's constant? That's how I mean. Isn't it a matter of always having the makings of greatness [a lie if there ever was one, what we mean is only a seeming greatness, a kind of impression or illusion of relative superiority rather than of actual greatness] on hand, in yourself, after which all you have got to do is decide to do something, and almost anything will do, it will have to have this quality of relative superiority because you yourself have it all the time, and you just don't need any more time than the time it takes to decide to do something."

"Do you mean, then, that Yancey hasn't got this quality, or that he never had it, or that he had it now and then for a while, and then lost it?"

"Is this interview about Yancey?"

"Well, no, but you said you're on your way to an appointment with him, and you presumed I know who he is. Well, who is he, (continued on page 157)Courteous to Women(continued from page 107) in relation to your debt?"

"Well, now, that aspect of the matter certainly has a bearing on the issue. Yancey is the man I telephoned five or six weeks ago when I reached Paris after losing all of my money in the gambling houses on the Riviera."

"How much did you lose?"

"Ten thousand dollars."

"Uncle Sam isn't going to like that, is he?"

"I don't like it, either. I only did it in the hope of getting the money he claims I owe by some other means than writing."

"Why not by means of writing?"

"Well, first, because it's hard work, as you yourself may know, in case you're a newspaperman who has written books, or is trying to."

"I've written six, and published three."

"Then you know."

"Only too well, and not one of the published books earned more than a thousand dollars."

"I'd like to read them sometime, if you've got copies to spare. Or at any rate I'd like to try. I'm a poor reader."

"They're not novels, they're only collections of pieces. You might enjoy reading around in them."

"Well, I'd like to try."

"Digression over. I mean, here's one of the books. I'll pick it up tomorrow morning."

"No, give me at least until day after tomorrow morning."

"OK. So you tried to win the money you need for taxes, and instead you lost the money you had."

"Every dollar of it, plus a thousand from my Italian publisher, plus three thousand from my London agent."

"Making the total lost $14,000?"

"I think of it as $15,000, because that's the way I prefer to think of losses. Never underestimate the amount you lose, always overestimate. Having lost, I came to Paris, to see Yancey, but for three days I put off telephoning him -- because I still had hopes of getting the money I need some other way."

"What other way, for instance?"

"The National Lottery of France. I bought one ticket for a little less than 2600 francs, worth about $5, and as the drawing was the following day, and as the results of the drawing would be available the day after the drawing, I wanted to wait, and while I waited I believed I might just win -- 50,000,000 francs, that is, or $100,000. It doesn't matter that I didn't know my ticket could win a maximum of only 5,000,000 francs. Who needs to know a thing like that? So let it be only 5,000,000, it would be a beginning, wouldn't it? And I could get back into all kinds of gambling action. As it turned out, I won."

"How much?"

"Three thousand francs, which is 400 francs more than I paid for the ticket--that would be a net profit of about 80 cents, which of course is better than nothing. Any kind of a win is better than a loss, but it just wasn't enough. And it costs money to live at the Hotel George V. Thus, there was no other way out. I telephoned Yancey and the following afternoon I went up and told him my story."

"What did you tell him?"

"I'm flat broke and ready to go to work--on anything!"

"And what did Yancey tell you?"

"'You've got a deal. Read some properties I own, and let me know what you think of them. If any of them appeal to you, write the whole thing over. We'll talk business as soon as you find something you like. If you don't find anything you like, come up with an idea, and if I like it, we'll talk business again.' "

"So what happened?"

"I examined half a dozen of his properties and didn't like any of them. I came up with an idea, he liked it, and he told me to go ahead and write it."

"Did you?"

"I began day before yesterday."

"What is it?"

"I haven't finished writing it yet, so I don't know."

"I've heard that you work swiftly. I've heard that you wrote a play that got all the prizes in six days, but then that was away back there in 1939. How long do you think it will take you to finish this job?"

"I'm giving myself nine days--that's three extra days, in honor of Paris, so to say. Well, this is the Plaza-Athénée. Have you got your story?"

"It would be a much better story if I knew how this job of writing for Yancey turns out, what you think of it, how much money you are paid for it, and so on."

"Yes, I suppose it would, but in that case you'll have to come around to the George V a week from today."

"OK, I will."

They said so long, and he went on into the lobby and asked the man at the desk to telephone Yancey.

While the man tried to get Yancey on the phone, the thought came to the writer that the better part of the problem of the writer, not himself necessarily, the writer in general, any writer, in the U. S. or anywhere else in the world, in Iceland, for instance, perhaps the most basic problem of any writer in the world, at any time, is health, pure and simple.

But most writers didn't have health. Scott Fitzgerald didn't, and neither did Thomas Wolfe. They hadn't had enough of it, at any rate. And if you were given to speculation of that sort you wondered what they would have gone on to write had they had health enough to survive. It was useless to do that, of course, to speculate in that manner, and yet it was almost inevitable, too.

If Wolfe had survived, if his spirit had quieted down a little, if he had become only a little disenchanted with his writing, with the world, with art, with the human race, with himself, if in fact he could come (at least for a moment or two now and then) to despise it all (as in fact he surely must have, in any case), and if he had fallen into silence, even, or into a state of despair, and sat in a chair in Brooklyn for a whole year, doing nothing, who could guess what he might have gone on to write? Who could guess how much deeper and more true his writing might have become, how much shorter in point of number of words used and how much more lean and clean in point of effect? But it was useless to do that, since the word had come from somewhere in the North, in the state of Washington or Oregon, that Thomas Wolfe had died, and the year was only 1938.

Now, Wolfe had been dead 21 years, even while he waited for the call to Yancey to go through. Why had Wolfe rushed? Why had he written so much, so swiftly, and so steadily, instead of saying suddenly, "Now, I stop."

Yancey came on the line, and after a few minutes they went to the bar and talked.

Yancey said, "What did you do after work last night? Get drunk? I mean, are you still drunk?"

"I was at the Aviation Club from one until four in the morning. Beginning with 50,000 francs--all the money I have in the world--I lost all of it in five minutes, excepting 3000 francs, and then, knowing I had to have my money back or my writing would go bad, I began to gamble carefully. After five minutes I had 15,000. I went from the big table to the little one just as the bank was betting 50,000 francs, and I said banco because nobody at that table knew I didn't have 50,000. The dealer gave me two pictures and then an ace, and he turned up for himself a picture and a two, and I figured my goose was cooked. But he added an eight to the two for a baccara, or nothing, so the croupier slid the win to me off the wooden spade."

"Well, you've got guts."

"It wasn't enough to have gotten out of a bad spot, I had to go on drinking and gambling, so pretty soon I was almost broke again. I lost and won three times, but at four in the morning I suddenly noticed that I had almost 100,000 francs. Without any trouble at all I got up and cashed in my chips and went out to the Champs-Élysées, and from across the street came four pretty girls in a merry group. They were from Le Sexy, and they wanted onion soup. They were so happy together I agreed to take them to where they like to have their onion soup, a place somewhere in Pigalle, but along with the onion soup they wanted champagne, too. I'd had such good luck, losing and winning, I figured hell, let them have what they want, it isn't my money anyway. The onion soup and champagne cost me 30,000 francs, or 60 bucks. I kissed them goodnight, in broad daylight, as if each had been a wife for 20 years or more, really loving each of them, not knowing anything at all about each of them, as it is with a man kissing his wife after 20 years. And then I went up the street and came upon one of the prettiest girls I have ever seen, surely not more than 17, with bruise marks all over her arms. I stopped to chat a moment, and she said she wanted a lot for what she had. I believed she would want 30,000, but a lot to her turned out to be 1500, or three lousy dollars. I loved her as if she were that same wife after a long night of fun, and she said, 'You are not an American, you cannot be an American, I know many Americans, I was brought up near an Army post. Yes, I got drunk last night all right, and I'm still drunk, but I know one thing--I know my work is going to go just fine when I get around to it in an hour or two. For three or four or five hours, for as long as I need to write scene one of act two I know my writing is going to go just fine, and that's my job, isn't it? To see that I permit my writing to go as nicely as possible? That's the real problem of the American writer, isn't it? To be courteous to women, so that things will be courteous to him, and let him write."