William Gaddis - The Recognitions

He smoothed down and released his obedient hair. — Are you using my Dostoevski piece in this issue?

— Ahm. . not in this one, but…

— Jesus Christ, you've had it up there for over a year. I'll finish the book before you print it, probably.

— Well, you know. There's politics up there like everywhere else. 5?6

— Who's out to get me?

— Well, you know that piece you did on Rilke last year, a lot of people. .

— Jesus Christ, whose fault was that? Everybody knows I wrote that Rilke's references were occasionally obscure, and that dumb Radcliffe girl I had typed obscene when she copied it. I'd like to know who the hell copy-read that. And putting a t in genial. .

— I was at Yaddo, said Bildow.

Someone from the neighboring international set tried to join them, offering, — Just imagine Victor Hugo wanting the whole city of Paris renamed for him! This credential earned cold stares, frightening, not for their severity, but for the very bleakness of the faces engaged.

— I hear you're going over, said Bildow's shorter friend, bleakly accusing.

— Yes, in a month or two. I want to see for myself, said Bildow, fingering his brown and yellow tie, bleakly defensive. Then he added, — It's funny that Max isn't here.

— What's so funny about it? That wise bastard. .

— He usually shows up at these cocktail parties, said Bildow.

— What the hell ever made you print that poem of his, in the last issue? The one about Beauty disdaining to destroy him, that one.

— Well, we… It was. .

— Did you see his paintings? Crap, all of them, even if he has got a sense of form.

— She looks like a good lay, said the stubby poet. — That blonde over there.

— Do you know who that is? It's that dumb God damn Radcliffe girl, Edna, the one who screwed me up on that Rilke piece, the one thing I've written that's worth everything else put together, because I understood Rilke, I understood him because he understood suffering, he respected human suffering, not like these snotty kids who are writing now. . He put his glass down empty, saw another, full, and picked it up before its owner had finished saying, — It's like the movies because there's everything spread out for you, and you just have to react, like at the movies you don't have to pay with your real emotions, you don't have to do anything. .

— And who's that over there, with all the queers around her? Agnes Deigh? Jesus Christ, I should think she'd get sick of playing mother to every God damn fairy in the city.

Esther had sat down on the couch because it was the only place in the room to sit. At one moment, she had thought that if she did not sit down, she might fall; but even now, sitting, she felt that she was falling, and she forced her back against the back of the couch, raising her chin as though trying to surface, for it was not a sense of tumbling through air, the limbs absurdly extended and unaccounted for, toward sudden impact which would so abruptly account for their ridiculous efforts in an unalterable pattern of incongruous torsions; but of falling in water where no bottom waited to delineate finality. With penetration peculiar to distance, every sound seemed to reach her, though it was perhaps her own doing, trying to escape the sounds nearest her by straining for those beyond.

— Malad just ed? To this? Well thank God I am. If I wasn't I'd go crazy, someone said across the room, while she listened.

— But you've got to understand New York, it's a social experience.

— That's why I like her, she's part woman, came a tittering asthmatic voice; and someone else was whistling slightly delayed accompaniment to a stretch of Handel's Water Music. The door opened, and she raised her head in hopeful anxiety, still unaware of how he would appear, the writer whom she had invited, and as afraid that he would not; and she lowered her eyes in disappointed relief, for the man who came in was carrying a baby, and immediately met by the girl with the bandaged wrists. — What did you bring it for? she greeted him, then turned to say, — This is my husband. He's late because he's been tight-rope walking. He has one set up in the apartment and he says he can't practice when I'm around and I'm around most of the time. .

In the middle of the room someone greeted the boy who had been looking for razor blades in the medicine cabinet with, — Charles Dickens, my God, they told me you'd gotten a job as publicity agent for the Hiroshima tourist bureau, Come see the Atom City and all that kind of thing. .

The kitten tore at the arm of the couch. Esther caught it, and drew it to her, Ellery's voice still the clearest in the room. He was talking to the blonde a few feet away. — Hollywood's through, honey. Why go way the hell out there when TV's right here in town. What do you think, Benny? Don't you like her for a spot in Lives of the Saints when it goes on video. .?

Esther realized that all this time the quiet seated presence beside her had been eating. He followed a stuffed egg with a small hot frankfurter, then a fresh carrot. — I beg your pardon, she said. He made a sound, eating. — Are you a friend of…

— Hors d'oeuvres. All I ever get, hors d'oeuvres. I keep thinking Benny will take me somewhere where we'll eat, an invitation to dinner somewheres, but all I get is cocktail parties, all we do is drink, all over town.

— Are you in television too?

— No, God help me. Benny and me went to school together. He coughed, and took another small hot frankfurter, as though annoyed at this interruption in his meal. — Benny and me went to school together, he repeated. — See this suit? This is Benny's. He gave it to me.

— It's a lovely suit, Esther said, looking at the gray flannel sleeve which came halfway down the man's forearm. — A very nice gift.

— Now it's too conservative for Benny, he can't wear things like this any more he says. Honest, you can't imagine a different guy than Benny when we went to school together, quiet and real serious. He was going to do great things then, he was going to design the most beautiful bridges you ever saw, and look at him now. Even a year ago I saw him and he was real, like the guy I used to go to school with. He isn't real any more. The tray was abruptly lifted away, and he grabbed two frankfurters and a stuffed egg. — Look at them, he said, watching casual hands pick up stuffed eggs, frankfurters, an occasional carrot. — You'd think they were hungry, the way they eat. Look at that woman with the white fingernails, does she look hungry? His meal was done, and he turned to Esther for the first time. — Do you know anything about player pianos?

— I'm afraid not, I've never really been interested. .

— I've written a history of the player piano. A whole history. It took me two years, it's got everything in it. What's the matter with people. What do they want to read about, sex all the time? Politics? Why, did you know, he went on in a spicy tone, — the Crown Princess of Sweden, the Queen of Norway, the Sultan of Johore, all of them had piano players? And Anna Held, Julia Marlowe, President McKinley, they had player pianos. And Pope Pius X, the Wright brothers, the ships of the Russian navy. .

— If you want something to eat, Esther interrupted, — I'm sure that out in the kitchen. .

— Anything, he said, but his eagerness was weary, for just then art had taken appetite's place. — Some day I'm going to have it printed myself, on Japanese onion-skin, bound in vellum… I don't know. Am I the only one that.'s hungry? Doesn't anyone else ever eat in New York? He stopped to pick some egg off the flannel sleeve. — White vellum with gold stamping. .