William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

— Well I, that's not the…

— Go a step further. Suppose there were anything to your lawyers' claims that my clients stole your work, suppose they had actually seen your play, actually read it and suppose they'd come to you with a straight up front deal, two hundred thousand for the film rights. Have they ever claimed to be artists? Do you think you'd recognize one particle of your own work up there on the screen ten writers and twenty rewrites later? one scrap of your lofty Socratic dialogue on justice? one shred of the bleak lyric soliloquy on the battlefield that brings down the curtain on your second act? the poetry in that wrenching description of chance and panic in battle? No, they'd show you the battle. That's what movies are. They'd pour blood and gore all over the screen. They'd have her hands down there unbuttoning his trousers. In other words they'd make exactly the movie they did make. Only difference would be you'd be standing here with two hundred thousand in your pocket that wouldn't be wiped out in legal fees.

— But that's not my, I didn't sell it they stole it, I mean I think you've got the wrong end of the stick there. They stole it and desecrated it that's what this lawsuit is about, I only want…

— Talking about the real world out there old fellow, red in tooth and claw with ravin, tried to give you a second chance didn't we? You see nine in ten of these cases settled out of court, I even talked my clients into offering that substantial settlement, about what you would have got if you'd simply sold the rights, tried to clean things up considering your sister and Trishy, all in the family so to speak but your people turned it down. Just running up your costs, go to trial and run up your costs that's their business, win or lose. Our business too, keep running up your costs until you cry uncle and my clients have deep pockets, filing this appeal of yours you're just running up your costs a little further.

— But, it's filed? the appeal's been filed?

— All routine, just going through the motions. I ran through their brief and they're trying to get a reversal on some minor technicality, oral arguments the next day or two but it's just a formality the Second Circuit requires. Just running up your costs.

— But what is it, what technicality, they didn't show me the…

— I won't waste your time with it old boy, sit you down with a law book like looking for your symptoms in Merck's Manual and telling your doctor the diagnosis, leave it to the professionals. It's what we get paid for, what I just finished saying isn't it?

— But that's what I…

— Just stop here for a minute and let me put in a disclaimer, want to be clear that I'm not giving or even purporting to give you legal advice, just another formality. That's what you pay for. You think I want something else out of it? I got something else. I got a chance I'd have never had otherwise. I got the chance to read your play. You remember Conrad describing his task, to make you feel, above all to make you see? and then he adds perhaps also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask? That's what I'm talking about, that's what you're giving us in your play old fellow, what you can do that none of the rest of us can. Maybe you're not even aware of how many of us envy these gifts you've got, look around at all the bad poems and bad art by people who can't spell and can't draw, bad books by somebody not because he wants to write, he wants to be a writer, millionaire stock peddler, car maker, general but he wants to be an author while the brilliant work of some real writer lies there gathering dust, a play like yours courts oblivion because there's no one around with the wit to grasp its possibilities, to see what you saw there and put it up on the stage where it belongs.

— Well there's a, matter of fact there's a director, there's a very prominent director who is interested.

— He's read it?

— Well he, not exactly but he's expressed his interest and it's just a matter of getting together with him, he…

— Splendid! Why didn't you tell me? and he swept the bottle up from the table between them, — here. Let's drink to it, shame you don't care for this it's really first class. Get someone like that behind it you shouldn't have much trouble lining up backers, people all over the place with nothing to do and money they don't know what to do with, no act of their own so they buy their way into somebody else's like the ones who litigate because they don't know who they are and it makes them feel real, gives them an identity when they see their name on a docket. Incidentally old boy, just between us, some time you or your sister get the chance to speak to Trishy about this retainer the firm's been billing her for, running up a lot of hours and the partners are on my back about it. I heard you're having a little billing problem with your people too.

— Well it's, I think it just comes down to the, to what you might call careless accounting procedures, they…

— Hardly surprised, I spotted that black they palmed off on you for a fraud the minute we got into your deposition, glad to see you've got new representation on your appeal. It's all a question of genes isn't it. The blacks lack a counting gene, you knew that didn't you? what keeps them right down there at the bottom of the heap? Lebanese, Palestinians, Pakistanis, weren't the Arabs the backbone of the African slave trade? Jews right through the subcontinent to the Pacific, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans that's where you find the counting gene. The Russians haven't got it, they can't count either, the only one who could was Chichikov and he was probably a Russian Jew at that, if you, what's the matter…

— Damn dog look what it's, Christina? Christina!

— Ghaa! and the flurry of white was caught square in the ribs with the polished thrust of a Ferragamo loafer and a splash of wine, — damn!

— Where are they, brought the plates in here and took the basket to the kitchen, Christina!

— Pookie? I heard Pookie yelp…

— Look at that!

— Be careful Trish, I think he had a little accident.

— Little! It was not an accident Christina, I saw him, he did it deliberately what have you been…

— Just put all that down here Lily and get some paper towels, will you take this Oscar? We put the food out on platters so we can see what we're doing, be careful Trish.

— No, they left out the squab, I'd hoped we could have it flambé if you had any Calvados but oh look! These zucchini flowers stuffed with chicken mousse and black truffles aren't they exquisite, poor little Pookie, here…

— For God's sake Trish don't feed him any more!

— Got hold of a great theme in your play there haven't you. Can't be too subtle about it with your theatre audience though, come right out with it.

— You're going to start in again with your narrow elitist notion of the theatre going public? I don't…

— Nothing like that no, problem with a real play of ideas like yours you try to keep things moving up there on the stage and they're liable to miss the whole point. Where's the real civil war going on, it's really raging inside your main character isn't it? what's tearing him to pieces from the minute he walks on? You've set up half your equation right there in the prologue with the old woman babbling about this runaway black slave, this John Israel she's loaded down with all her baggage about the Lord's everlasting mercy and laying up treasures in heaven, he's a living reproach by the time we get to what's the brother's name in the second act there who helped him escape.

— They do something divine with oysters in an oyster aspic with caviar and a sliver of smoked salmon, did we leave it in the kitchen? could you look while you're out there dear?