Elise Blackwell - Grub

It was much later, out on the deck, that Eddie Renfros approached him. The co-ed Eddie had trotted out to the conference was more young than pretty. She looked eager during the introductions but then, perhaps knowing her place, stepped away to look out at the view.

The two former friends started with small talk. Jackson knew that he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help asking Eddie what he was working on.

“I’m dead as a novelist, and I’m happy enough to attend my own funeral. No, it’s poetry, wine, and young women for me from here on out. The youngest I can get away with, anyway.” His laugh was good natured, but the edge of one drink too many serrated the surface of his voice. “And I read more these days. To wit: ‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made of, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’ There was a time when a way with words was enough, you know. Anyway, I’ve got a chapbook coming out with a publisher who’s doing some really interesting things. And a real volume, too, with a university press.”

Jackson tried his weight against the rail as the evening moon passed behind a cloud. “If you’ve found your calling, then I’m happy for you.”

“And what of our old friend Baffler? Has he found his calling?” Eddie asked.

Jackson almost said Amanda saw him but caught himself and replied, “He’s been spotted on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. Seems he’s hooked up with an anorexic punk writer and lives even further west than he used to. Anyway, they tromp east toward the stagies every morning with those huge over-the-shoulder newspaper carriers filled with self-produced pamphlets. They’re called something like Flash One, Flash Two, Flash Three , and so on. Dedicated to Clarice Aames, one suspects.”

Eddie smirked as though amused, but underneath the smile, he looked fundamentally sad. “He eking out a living from that?”

Jackson shook his head. “I don’t think so, but they also sell used books and make some bit off of that.”

“He’s the purest novelist I’ve ever met,” said Eddie, gesturing back his girlfriend with a wave.

“You’re a lucky man, Eddie.” Jackson winked. “Be sure,” he said in an exaggerated aside to the young woman, “be sure he tells you the story of how the Sea Miss emerged from the mist.”

“Oh yes,” she replied with an enthusiasm that already sounded forced. “That’s a great story.”

“Tuck him in tight.” Jackson turned to embrace his friend, who held the grasp a bit too long.

“No hard feelings,” said Eddie.

“None at all,” Jackson whispered, more or less to himself.

After Eddie and the girl tottered off, Jackson stood in the spot where he’d promised himself success. He surveyed the vista he’d tried to describe five years earlier.

“The backs of the mountains curve like those of sleeping monsters,” he tested, “benevolent in that they mean no one real harm — yet dangerous all the same.”

G rub is an updating of George Gissing’s satire of the Victorian literary marketplace ( New Grub Street , 1891). It draws on it, borrows from it, and could never have been written without it. I am indebted, also, to those friends who told me their stories of writing triumph and humiliation. Thank you.

Elise Blackwell

CREDIT PHOTO TO:

Keith McGraw, University of South Carolina

Elise Blackwell is the author of Hunger and The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish . She teaches at the University of South Carolina, in Columbia, where she lives with her husband, writer David Bajo, and their daughter Esme.