Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

The introductory chapter is full of errors of fact and judgment, and the prose is like that of a foreigner who has no feeling for English and probably not much more for his indigenous bush tongue .

The other:

The introductory chapter, where Mandell says he approaches Southey from the inside, is bad. The rest of the manuscript falls below its level.

Mandell realized, considering these criticisms, “Even experts can’t agree.” More important, a contradiction implied intellectual space. He could perhaps shoot The Enduring Southey through that space into publication. He corrected facts wherever he sensed them. With commas he jerked his style toward elegance. Because an expert had said the introductory chapter was best, Mandell put it last. Miss Nugent retyped, then mailed The Enduring Southey to another press. It was rejected.

T. T. Mandell locked his office door and thought: I went to required schools, received required degrees, made changes required by experts. What then do they want? It struck him: A man can’t be rejected. He can only reject himself. Thus he recovered will and, to the new criticisms, responded with vigorous compliance. He eradicated paragraphs and pages as if they contained nothing. Though he worried about leaving breaks in his argument, time was short. He could not say, when required to state his achievements, that for a long while he had been rewriting a book that he had been rewriting. Anyone could say that. Even a moron. The manuscript — retyped, mailed to a scholarly press called Injured Merit — was returned with a letter from an editor: “Chop Southey in half. Put in pictures.”

T. T. Mandell locked his office door, removed his clothes; silently, he rolled on the floor.

To colleagues he showed the letter — not with pride but by the way, as if unsure of its tone. They said it urged, without committing the editor to a promise of publication, that Mandell rewrite and resubmit. He frowned, puckered, and said, “Hmmm.” His colleagues stared. He himself wondered, fleetingly, if he wasn’t a prick.

Mandell cut The Enduring Southey in half and inserted a photo of the library in the Bronx where he’d done research. Below the photo he wrote, “Thanks.” It occurred to him to insert a photo of himself. That might seem presumptuous, but he remembered scholarly books where the author’s photo appeared — an old book on Southey, for example. In the library he found that book again, but no photo, only a drawing, and not of the author but Southey. Mandell nearly cried. Instead, he laughed and told people. Some laughed.

The Enduring Southey was not resubmitted to Injured Merit. It had become too good. Miss Nugent mailed it to a university press. It was rejected.

T. T. Mandell locked his office door, then telephoned a number he had prepared for this eventuality. A moment later he spoke to a lawyer who specialized in outrage. Mandell told the lawyer what degrees he held and where he had been teaching, as an assistant professor, for several years, while he tried to fulfill the publication requirements of a scholar as well as the general institution of requirements as such. He spoke of his faith in the system. He said he wasn’t a troublemaker or a critic of prevailing values but the author of a proper book rewritten according to the criticism of experts. There had been a time, Mandell said, when he wore sneakers to class, but upon noticing that no other faculty members wore sneakers, he quit doing so. There were other things of this nature, but, Mandell believed, the lawyer had the picture. The lawyer then explained: “Professor, there’s no action in this crap.” Mandell read the letters, revised the manuscript, threw out the photo. Miss Nugent retyped, mailed. The Enduring Southey was rejected.

T. T. Mandell locked his office door. As if from the abyss of authenticity, a voice came: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a nice guy.” Mandell listened. The voice continued: “I made the whale.” Mandell felt depressed — or deepened. In this mood, he made revisions.

Miss Nugent now wore glasses and walked faster. Leaving her typewriter to go pee, she always glanced at her wristwatch as if to confirm her need. She retyped The Enduring Southey, mailed it away again, then again. Mandell’s face had a greasy, dissatisfied quality now, impossible to wash or shave away, and his manner had gained spasmodic vigor. Once he interrupted a conversation between two colleagues, rushing up to their lunch table, driving a bread knife into the Formica top, and shouting, “You were talking about Moby Dick , right?”

The Enduring Southey had been mailed away for the last time. To Stuttgart. Miss Nugent believed the finest scholarly books were published there. Mandell could afford no more rejections, certainly none that might take long in coming, but Miss Nugent felt The Enduring Southey was hers as much as his. She wanted the last rejection to come from the best. The Enduring Southey was accepted.

A VW mechanic in Mandell’s neighborhood translated the letter for him. Mandell waved it at Miss Nugent and flung into a dance before her typewriter. She pummeled the keys and hissed, “Don’t let them have it. Tell them to screw off.” He gave her a look of terror and fled.

Der andauernde Southey was published. Mandell was given permanency. He mastered the ho-ho style of laughter and, at department meetings, said things like “What fun.” Discussing the book with students who, someday, would write one like it, he said it wrote itself. Nasty reviews appeared, but they were in German. Mandell was considered an expert and received manuscripts from university presses with requests for his opinion. His letters were always written with uncompromising and incisive hatred.

HE SMILED AT HER. She smiled at him and ate dessert, her pinky so nicely hooked it tore my heart. Dessert was pear under chocolate and flaming brandy. It slipped from spoon to blubbery dissolution. When I tried to taste, I swallowed. Then came a flickering city of liqueurs. Then marijuana, a language green and gold popping around the table from mouth to mouth. Nothing went by me unlipped. Nothing tasted. From course to course I’d swallowed textures, not tastes, like a cat gobbling kill. I’d eaten; I wanted to eat. Other guests flashed marvels achieved, readiness to die. Music from the drawing room — black, full of drum — summoned us to further pleasure. Actual blacks, stationed around the table, stiff and smug in tuxedos, gleamed consummation. I assumed they’d pissed in our soup. Stanger smiled at Mildred. She at him. Above glass, silver, flowers, candles, and the ministrations of swift black hands, everyone at the table had smiled for the last two hours. Servants are the price elegance pays to pain. Alone, the Stangers couldn’t have made this occasion for forty guests; not without threatening every institution upon which society stands. To that sentiment, I drank piss. A ritual initiation. I’d never been to such a dinner party, but I could tell it was first-rate. Teeth stabbed out of my ass to eat the chair. However, the meal was over. Stanger rose. His hand claimed my wife’s lower back. They strolled to the drawing room, a sight flattering to me, the lovely valley of her back appreciated in his munificent hand. Yet it gave me a feeling I couldn’t understand, act upon, or use. Like Hamlet’s feeling in Elsinore. But this was no dingy, boozy castle in barbaric Denmark. This was Now Town, Sutton Place. Windows triangulated, above the East River, north to Welfare Island, south to the Statue of Liberty. I couldn’t make a speech or kill. I did what I could. I tried not to look at them, not to see. I joined the other guests, wondering what brought them here. Did they all want jobs? During our interview, Stanger said,“Come to dinner, Mr. Liebowitz. On Bastille Day. We’ll chat some more about the job.” I arrived. He nodded at me, took Mildred’s arm, then talked to her, no one else, and here I was, his dinner in my gut, his grass in my brain, talking to myself, thinking grass. How did you play this game? Like a delegate to my thinking, Mrs. Stanger swept boldly through the grass. “So, Mr. Liebowitz, you’re interested in publishing,” and she led me to a chair opposite hers. “You’ll make a lovely publisher.” Her shoes were gold, her dress was white material through which I couldn’t tell if I couldn’t see. Intimations of symmetry seesawed her voice. Slowly, precisely, she crossed her legs, sliding white skin beneath white, translucent membrane. Her shoe began winding in the air. I looked.