William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

Do I remember correctly then, William? You said it was fight for the just man to injure bad men and enemies?

(WILLIAM NODS)

Well, let us take horses. We've had an injured horse, haven't we. And when horses are injured, do they become better or worse?

WILLIAM

Worse.

KANE

Worse in the qualities, the virtues of horses? Not, say, of dogs?

WILLIAM

Horses, of course.

KANE

But injured dogs are worse, then, are worse in their qualities as dogs, are they? And what about men? Aren't they worse in terms of human virtue when they're injured? And isn't justice a human virtue? Then, my young friend, if men are injured, aren't they made unjust?

(WILLIAM NODS, HALF SMILING)

All right, we'll take horses again, the art of horsemanship. Can the horseman use his art to make others bad horsemen?

WILLIAM

No…

KANE

And can the just use justice to make men unjust? Can the good use virtue to make men bad? Any more than heat can produce cold? or drought moisture?

(WILLIAM SHAKES HIS HEAD)

Then if the good cannot injure, and the just is good, it isn't the work of the just man to injure anyone, is it, friend or not. No, that's the work of the unjust man.

— See now right there where all that almost sounds familiar, that's what happens. Like I said, you take a song now, take that song about, full moon and empty arms…

— Stop singing! Of course, it's that Rachmaninoff piano concerto obviously they lifted it, the way they plundered Chopin for I'm, always chasing…

— Don't need to sing it for me Oscar, see what I'm saying is where maybe you can't protect an idea, what you can protect is the expression, your original artistic expression of this idea in these characters, what they do, how they talk, but you try to prove they stole all that from your play it doesn't exactly sound like what you hear these days in the movies.

— It's not teeming with obscenities if that's what you mean, — I just mean for instance right there where they were talking about justice, they…

— Right there where they were talking about justice, Mister Basic, happens to be some of the greatest dialogue in the history of western civilization. That passage, the whole scene is from the first book of Plato's Republic that's why it sounds familiar. You're supposed to recognize it because it's, what's the matter.

— That's good to know.

— What do you mean now it's good to know, what are you shaking your head for.

A match flared and died in an aimless cloud of smoke. — I mean maybe that's something not to get into if you try to go ahead with this, go pointing around at Fitzhugh and your Plato there they go ahead and claim fair use once they establish this whole story idea was in the public domain, show that clipping you read where the…

— We just settled that didn't we? You're telling me that two or three years ago this Kiester happened to see it in the Gastonia Sentinel for December third, nineteen hundred and thirty thought it would make a good movie?

— Need to prove it.

— Fine yes, I'd like to see them try to prove it.

— You. You do, need to prove he didn't.

— Well that's absurd. It's obvious isn't it?

— Not to the law Oscar. What the law's all about.

— All right then listen. Get hold of their records, subpoena their records or whatever you do, prove right there that they came up with this based on a true story ad at the last minute just to cut me off at the pass? that they got it from these cheap stories about my father in the yellow dog press down there trying to poison the atmosphere over the appeal in this Szyrk case? Any court could see that.

— Never tell what any court will see. They granted the appeal didn't they? overturned his decision?

— What? When. I didn't…

— Got him for error before some new judge on the Third Circuit down there, I thought you'd know about it from your father.

— Well not, we're not in very close touch but, but that's just what I've been saying isn't it? All of it down there, it's nothing but mean dirty politics, twist anything around to damage him because he's a damn yankee they're still living in the Reconstruction, you show one spark of civilized intelligence and…

— What I saw it all looks pretty legal, struck down his summary judgment where there's still triable issues of fact. Some mixup over a clouded title to the land where Szyrk put up his Cyclone Seven, threw in the court's failure to cite the Virginia statutes in his citations even got some of the locals there recanting on their interrogatories, claim they were tricked by the fancy language where Szyrk claims his sculpture is site specific for the moral torpor and spiritual vacuity of the place the only words they got hold of were moral and spiritual, thought it was all some big tribute.

— Just what I've been saying? Exemplars of our moral and spiritual values they've never heard the word torpor and the only time they've heard vacuum is a vacuum cleaner, so stupidity triumphs and the law celebrates it?

— Wouldn't be the first time would it. Take Szyrk naming this James B kid as a defendant now you've got the two of them joining up to sue these toymakers over this Free Spot game, James B suing over these Spot dolls and Szyrk suing over these T shirts and tinny souvenirs of his sculpture claims it's a protected statement, dog lovers suing all of them over animal rights while they're trying to find somebody in California who keeps sending Spot dog candy with ground glass in it, got a lot on their plate down there.

— It's got nothing to do with this crazy Szyrk anyhow, you've seen that monstrosity he calls a sculpture? Just their way of staining my father's judicial record, a good thing he's out of it.

— May not be if they send it back to him for a jury trial. Why this Szyrk didn't plead his First Amendment rights as a protected statement right from the start's how I would have handled it.

— Well why don't you then. Handle it. Call them up and tell them you'll handle it, or maybe you don't want to. Maybe you wouldn't want to walk into a courtroom down there.

— If I thought that way Oscar I'd still be out behind a plough, more likely up front pulling one. Nothing please me better but I've got a lot on my plate too and I'll tell you one thing. He's got a way better case than you do here. He could shit on a shingle and call it a protected statement under the First Amendment, you can't find that letter rejecting your play you don't even know who you sent it to. You go and serve a complaint on this Kiester they'll respond with an answer and motion to dismiss and they'll probably get it. If they don't and you have to subpoena their records they come after yours too and that means that letter and all that doesn't even come till the discovery process, depositions, documents, interrogatories all the rest of it, motions for summary judgment if that's denied you get ready for your pretrial conference maybe get a settlement. If you don't you go to trial, you lose there and you go to appeal spending your money every step, every step you take, disbursements, stenographers, transcripts, all that plus your legal fees I'd just hate to see it, case like this where it looks like you've hardly got one I'd just hate to see you laying out money like that even if you've got it, like it looks like you do.

— Yes well I thought though, these legal fees I thought maybe we can work something out. I mean Harry said he'd talk to Mister Lepidus he knew him in law school and he thought, I thought maybe we could, that we might work something out.

— You better talk to him, find it's all pretty cut and dried though. See they have what they call these billable hours where an associate like me, I have to turn in two thousand of them a year, that goes to the firm, comes out of your pocket and out of my hide. That's the way it works.