Rafael Yglesias - The Work Is Innocent

“Yeah,” Richard said. “We fuck like grownups, you know.”

His remark caused a commotion but it was nothing like the shock he had expected, and despite the embarrassment that instantly overwhelmed him, he wished it had upset them more. Joan saved him from both feelings, however, when she said, “It might be better if we were more childish about it.”

“Oh, dear,” Aaron said. “I don’t think I should be hearing this conversation.”

“But you’re just the person who I’ve wanted to talk to about this,” Joan said amidst the now relaxed laughter.

“Well,” Aaron said. “Don’t blame me for any sexual problems. It’s his mother’s fault, I’m sure.”

“The same old story,” Betty said.

Joan got along so well with his parents and Naomi and John that he was a little disappointed. She fit in perfectly with their casual teasing, and he watched in disbelief as his mother actually brought out his baby pictures. He was genuinely charmed by this foolish exhibition of love: all of them laughing and smiling at photographs of him, looking up every few minutes to check on the final product. But he felt, with an acuteness and distance he hadn’t achieved ever before, the irritation of being young, of being cute, of having easy problems, of having a quick access to talent.

When they had all retired for the night, Richard noticed the light on in his father’s study and he excused himself from Joan and went there. Aaron looked up at him as he entered, and the look on his face made Richard feel, for a moment, that there was nothing bothering him.

“Can we talk? Am I interrupting?”

“Sure, fellow,” Aaron said with one of those reflective smiles that both pleased and suffocated.

“I seem like a pretty big success, don’t I?” Richard asked.

“Ah, not so big.”

He was immediately annoyed. “Are you serious!”

“Of course, you’re a big success. You need to be told that?” Aaron seemed to think of something. “Haven’t I told you how good that novel is?”

“Oh yeah,” Richard said, and then laughed at himself. “I was ready to blow up at you for not thinking I was a success.”

“But I—”

“I know, I know. What’s funny, or what’s sad, I should say, is that I came in to complain about my success, or lack of it.”

“You mean, your book wasn’t successful enough?”

“Yeah,” Richard said hesitantly. “Well, it’s not that simple. It didn’t mean what I thought it would.”

“Oh,” Aaron said, and looked at him encouragingly. “It never does, you know. What one wants is never the answer to all one’s problems.”

“I know, I know. I’ve always read that. I think it was Anna Karenina that first taught me that. I longed and longed for her to run off with Vronsky. I guess, subliminally, I thought it would be like a Dickens novel. After the conflict, happiness. I still resent and disbelieve her suicide.”

“Well,” Aaron said, lowering his voice so it wouldn’t seem like a lecture. “It’s because she’s transgressed society’s rules.” Aaron wanted to elaborate and he would have in the past. Richard had strained to achieve so that he wouldn’t need to be taught such things, and now he regretted having squashed his father’s impulse to guide him. “You haven’t,” Aaron said.

“Oh, I have.”

“You’re another Karenina?” Aaron said with a laugh. “I don’t think so. You’ve just flaunted the rules a little. And she, after all, cut off her future while you have guaranteed yours.” Aaron watched Richard’s reaction to this. “Right? Or maybe not. I don’t know, maybe you don’t want to be a writer.”

“Do I have a choice now? I mean a choice that allows me the sickening ego gratification I need. Of course I can grow organic vegetables.”

Aaron leaned forward and slapped his knee. “Listen. There are countless things, important things, you can do, and do brilliantly. Without even giving up writing. I’m talking about—”

“I know. Please don’t list them. They embarrass me.”

“They do?” Aaron was amazed. “Well, tell me what bothers you. I’m talking too much, I’m not letting you speak.”

“Okay.” Richard let himself think for a moment. He wanted to be clear and totally honest. “I want, I’ve always wanted, to be the most important writer alive. Novelist, not writer. Nothing else means that much, though of course I may like doing them more. I hold you responsible for that. I don’t blame you for it, but the way you brought me up, the way you talked about novelists made any other profession a cop out. I don’t mean this has been forced on me. It was given to me and I began to force it, to push it. I made myself develop contempt for any nonartistic profession, and then I slowly began to loathe the other arts as well. It’s a genuine revulsion. I can’t complete myself or my life without writing novels.”

“But you’re doing that.”

“If I hadn’t been published for another ten years then perhaps what’s just happened would have pleased me for quite a while. Dad, I never wrote anything longer than three pages until my first novel. You know that. It was published immediately. The instantness of it. God, I expected to be embalmed the way Bellow is, or whoever. I’m emotionally ready for the end. The retirement to the country, the National Book Award, the fifteen published novels, the honorary degrees, a Writer’s in Residence, the starry-eyed coeds wanting to fuck me, the Ph.D.s being done on my work, long careful discussions of my influence in The New York Review of Books.”

“That too,” Aaron said, laughing. “You’re asking for a lot.”

“After one crumby novel. You’re damn right. I think I was overpraised.”

“Oh no you weren’t. Don’t believe that!”

“Well, that’s what I’m afraid they’ll think. That they made it too easy for me. That they’ll make the rest of my life miserable by saying I haven’t lived up to my potential. Or worse, that out of desperation I’ll start writing those fake modern novels with glittering prose surfaces, so mystifying that they won’t dare to say they’re empty novels.”

“That’s not going to happen. You have too much self- awareness for that. In fact, you have too much self-awareness. Relax. Your work is good, and you’re very young, and frankly, after forty years of work, I think you’ll probably have all those things.”

“But don’t you see that if I don’t get those things, I’ll be horribly crushed? And if this hadn’t happened to me, being a prodigy”—he stopped and looked disgusted—“I should never have thought that my chances were so good to be what I want. I could have dismissed it as a wild fantasy. But from now on, I’ll always feel that I had my chance and blew it.”

Betty appeared at the door wearing a long robe. “Are you two fighting?”

“No, no,” Aaron said. “Come in. I’m afraid our son is feeling the burdens of the world too much.”

“Ah,” Betty sighed, and went over to Richard, brushing his hair back from his brow and bending to kiss him on the forehead. “My poor son.”

He felt queasy and ready to cry. He wanted to say how scared, how incompetent he felt to live up to this life, this deadening progression of success. But the moment for releasing those feelings was past and now he could only force them self-consciously.

“Richard,” Aaron said, “if you think about your situation the way you just described it, I think you’re right, I think it will become harder and harder for you to work. You’re like me, you become the person you’re talking to, and so you’ve read all those reviews about being a boy genius and you’ve taken on the tragic part. That’s what people love to think about extraordinary young artists. That they’re doomed or that they’re freaks who will always be unhappy. Hasn’t everyone been hinting at that?”