Steven Millhauser - Edwin Mullhouse - The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954

Thumbelina, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Rapunzel, The Adventures of Pinocchio, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, Rumpelstiltskin, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Immortal Moment: A Survey of English Literature from Beowulf to Joyce, The Valiant Little Tailor, The Little Pretzel Who Had No Salt, The Absent Minded Wizard, Doctor Dumpling, Archibald and the Jumblejacks, The Pinch-me Punch-me Bounce-me Bump-me Toss-me Tumble-me Tickle-me O, Spiderella, Rambambolo, Ha Ha the Hee Haw and the Moo Moo Who Said Meeow, Donald Dandelion and Oopsy Daisy, Snow Red, Periander Pippintop, The Azurl of Climpertoy, Prince Imlo of Nax, The Golden Nose, Solomon Snudge, Bicklebuck and the Binglebat, Billy Bimbo, The Hippopota Mister and the Hippopota Miss, Ho Hum and Heave Ho, The Near-Sighted Ogre, Gerald the Intelligent Grape, The Lonely Island, The Little Shadow Who Had No Boy, The Snowgirl Who Melted Away, The Timid Troll, Coralora, Swanita, The Hunchbacked Imp, King Crunch, Nibble Nibble Nosebeam, Theodore the Moose, The Boy Who Never Grew Up, The Teeny Weeny Genie, Willy of Chile, The Picture Book of Snowflakes, Andy the Amoeba and His Friends, Why Is the Sky Blue? Jerry the Giraffe Has His Tonsils Out, The Tired Hiccup, The Pipe-Lover’s Guide to Real Smoking Enjoyment, The Jewel in the Grass, The Queen in the Lake, The Door in the Tree.

If the emblem of Edwin’s first year is a boy with a shiny chin seated in a playpen, and if the emblem of Edwin’s second year is a boy seated in front of a fireplace in the bright circle of his toys, the emblem of Edwin’s third year is a boy kneeling on a chair with his elbows on the kitchen table and his chin on his hands, his hair touching his father’s shoulder as he stares in a stern trance at the open book before them on the table. Mr. Mullhouse was fond of changing his voice whenever someone in the story spoke: he squealed, he growled, he lisped, he stuttered, he wheezed, pounding his chest. Once during the speech of a fire-breathing dragon he moved his lips soundlessly, and when Edwin angrily complained, his father argued that the fire had burned away his vocal cords. Sometimes, tired, Mr. Mullhouse would leave out a word or an entire sentence and start to turn the page. But Edwin had many pages and even entire books by heart, and clutching his father’s arm he would say with a look of shocked reproach: “Oh no, oh no, you left it out,” whereupon Mr. Mullhouse, looking a trifle guilty, would start at the top of the page and read straight through in his best manner, glancing from time to time at Edwin with secret pride.

From the age of two and a half Edwin began to make up stories. These early tales were remarkably unremarkable except for the energy with which he recited them and the sudden, startling, dreamlike, and ultimately boring shifts that occurred whenever some new idea popped into his head. For the most part his stories were unintelligible and interminable, consisting of bits and pieces of whatever had just been read to him combined with obscure references to some real incident that was weighing on his mind: a broken kangaroo, an angry door, a missing head. How often, in those days, might you have found us in some shady corner of the bright back yard or in a striped rectangle of window on the living room rug, I with downcast eyes and Edwin with a wild look about him as he tried my patience with some tedious story about a glass king who had wandered into the kitchen in search of a golden key and mommy said for god sakes for god sakes and the water was boiling and then we all had coffee and ice cream and cups and spoons and zebras. Stories were all energy in those days; Edwin the dreamer, Edwin the plotter and planner, Edwin the flat-on-his-backer in his room at noon, is a later though no less determined Edwin. In the Late Years, during difficult stretches of writing, Edwin would complain clumsily — his conversational powers were distinctly third-rate — that he had lost his early fluency, and one slowly gathered from his incompetent mutterings his amusing notion that now he had to construct with all the cunning of a jaded intellect and all the cruel pressure of a totalitarian will, self-consciously and painfully, syllable by weary syllable, the faded reproductions of those early fluent masterpieces. The notion of a “fluent masterpiece,” had anyone else suggested it, would have made Edwin laugh scornfully through his nose or blink rapidly in a feigned idiocy of incomprehension. He never abandoned the myth of an earlier ease and naturalness of expression; perhaps in some fashion it was necessary for his work, heating him to a yet higher fever of scrupulous artifice. Easy and natural his early stories may have been, but masterpieces they most emphatically were not. It is only my word against Edwin’s, I know; but he is dead, and besides, I was the one who had to listen to that drivel.

Each of Edwin’s early books was at one time or another his favorite; but his constant favorite, his favorite of favorites, which he knew line by line and page by page despite his illiteracy and which he insisted on having read to him at least twice a day for more than a year, was The Lonely Island. Because of its importance in the spiritual history of my immortal friend, I shall here transcribe the simple text of its 44 pages, leaving to the reader’s imagination those vast gloomy illustrations hovering over the words in shades of green, blue, and midnight black.

Page 1. Once upon a time there was an island.

2. It lived all alone in a great big ocean.

3. In the summer the sun shone brightly.

4. In the winter it snowed.

5. At night it was very dark on the island.

6. No people lived on the island.

7. Sometimes rain came to the island …

8. … but then it went away.

9. Sometimes the wind came to the island …

10. … but then it blew away.

11. Once a bird came to the island.

12. It built its nest in the highest tree.

13. The island liked the bird in the tree.

14. The bird sang to the island.

15. One day the bird flew away.

16. The island was very sad.

17. Its tears fell into the ocean.

18. That night the island had a dream.

19. It dreamed of an ocean with many islands.

20. The islands played leapfrog.

21. The islands played ring around the island.

22. The islands swam in the water all day long.

23. All the islands were very happy.

24. The island woke up. It was all alone.

25. The sky grew dark and snow began to fall.

26. Snow fell for many days and many nights.

27. Great waves fell on the island.

28. One day the sun came out.

29. The ocean lay all about as far as the eye could see.

30. The island was very lonely in the ocean.

31. That night the island had another dream.

32. It dreamed of an ocean with many islands.

33. It dreamed that the islands came out of the dream …

34. … into the ocean.

35. The island woke up. It saw …

36. … another island and …

37. … another island and …

38. … another island!

39. There were islands as far as the eye could see.

40. The lonely island now had many friends.

41. The islands played leapfrog.

42. The islands played ring around the island.

43. The islands swam in the water all day long.

44. The lonely island was lonely no more.

EDWIN’S GRANDMOTHERS never appeared together. Before Karen was born, the grandmothers slept in the empty bed in the extra room, but after Karen was born the empty bed was moved into Edwin’s room and the grandmothers slept there. The empty bed was never moved back; and after Karen had a bed of her own, the grandmothers slept in Karen’s bed and Karen slept in the empty bed in Edwin’s room.

Edwin’s favorite grandmother was Grandma Mullhouse. She had thick white hair that broke at her neck into a froth of curls; a single comma-shaped curl came down over one eyebrow. She wore vast-brimmed hats that shook when she walked or brimless hats with short black veils and hatpins tipped with red or blue or yellow knobs. She wore bright silk neckerchiefs, tying them at the side of her neck like a pirate. She liked bright red dresses with wide shoulders and she always carried a huge pocketbook, which Mr. Mullhouse called her briefcase. On her dress, over her heart, she wore a big pin that she called a brooch; Edwin’s favorites were the three gold leaves joined on a single curving stem, and the silver galleon sailing on silver waves. On each wrist she wore two heavy round bracelets that banged together whenever she moved. At the ends of her thick fingers, which were bent in different directions at the last joint, her nails were fiery red. She smoked cigarettes, leaving bright red stains on the ends, and she always coughed, saying: “It’s not a cough, Abe, believe me.” She could put out a cigarette by squeezing it with her fingers, because she had no feelings there any more. She brought Edwin white bags of soft-centered raspberry candy in cellophane wrappers that were twisted at both ends, handfuls of blue and red and white poker chips, and decks of shiny playing cards that she got from someone called Max. Once she gave him a gold compact with a round mirror and an orange powderpuff that looked like a beanbag. After the first day, when she talked to Mr. and Mrs. Mullhouse about arthritis, rheumatism, and rising prices, Grandma Mullhouse spent almost all her time with Edwin and me, playing Go Fish and Old Maid, making vast bowls of custard or huge yellow cakes with orange icing, and telling stories about the man who thought she was thirty-eight or the man who thought she was thirty-five or the time she used to give piano lessons before her fingers got crooked or the time she was thrown from a merry-go-round halfway across the park and landed on her back and stood up without a scratch; it would have killed most people. After a week she went home, spending the last afternoon with Mr. and Mrs. Mullhouse and talking about arthritis, rheumatism, and rising prices.