William Gaddis - J R

— Well I, I don’t think so but…

— Just told Mister Eigen his play doesn’t exist at all didn’t you? Doesn’t trust actors doesn’t trust directors he ties up the end with a knot because he doesn’t trust the God damned audience told you Schramm had a tin ear didn’t I? Problem how to get rid of the God damned artist why he kept coming in here and bothering you didn’t he?

— No who, Mister Schramm? No but he…

— Asked me to tell you about Johannes Müller didn’t you? Told you you’re not listening I’m talking about Johannes Müller, nineteenth-century German anatomist Johannes Müller took a human larynx fitted it up with strings and weights to replace the muscles tried to get a melody by blowing through it how’s that. Bast?

— Yes it sounds quite…

— Thought opera companies could buy dead singers’ larynxes fix them up to sing arias save fees that way get the God damned artist out of the arts all at once, long as he’s there destroy everything in their God damned path what the arts are all about, Bast? that’s why you hid it?

— What… he came pulling on one shirt, holding a sleeve of the other to his throat spreading with red — hid what, I…

— Manuscript you told me’s so hard why you hid it didn’t you?

— Which the, no the one in the blue cover? No I just put it in the wait, wait sit down I’ll…

— Found it! the oven door crashed closed. — Promise to read it to you hide it in the God damned oven…

— No I just put it in there so it wouldn’t get any dirtier but…

— Read it to you tell me what’s so God damned hard.

— Yes but I haven’t time right now Mister Gibbs I have to go somewhere could I, could I have my shoe?

— Says quarter of seven under there Bast got plenty of time sit down.

— No but for the right time you have to subtract that from ten because wait wait don’t sit on my…

— Opening kind of epigraph here please do not shoot the, listening?

— The opening epitaph yes but I need my… he sank down on Hoppin’ With Flavor! — my shoe what, what happened to it…

— Told you been tripping on the God damned sole’s loose, now listening?

— But it’s almost, how did you…

— Told you I broke my neck to get back here wanted me to read this to you didn’t you? Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best. There, anything hard about that?

— No it’s, it’s fine… he got the inert foot propped on Moody’s and bent forward to work on the knotted lace.

— Posted in a Leadville saloon, this appeal caught the eye of art in its ripe procession of one through the new frontier of the ’eighties where the frail human element still abounded even in the arts as Oscar Wilde alone, observing the mortality in that place is marvelous, passed on unrankled by that phrase doing his best, redolent of chance and the very immanence of human failure that century of progress was consecrated to wiping out once for all; for if, as another mother country throwback had it, all art does constantly aspire to the condition of music, there in a Colorado mining town saloon all art’s essential predicament threatened to be laid bare with the clap of a pistol shot just as deliverance was at hand, born of the beast with two backs called arts and sciences whose rambunctious coupling came crashing the jealous enclosures of class, taste, and talent, to open the arts to Americans for democratic action and leave history to bunk. Now God damn it Bast anything hard about that?

— Well, well no… he eased the shoe off.

— Good, nothing so God damned hard about this, anything hard about this? A remarkable characteristic of the Americans is the manner in which they have applied science to modern life Wilde marveled on, struck by the noisiest country that ever existed. One is waked up in the morning, not by the singing of the nightingale, but by the steam whistle… All art depends upon exquisite and delicate sensibility, and such constant turmoil must ultimately be destructive of the musical faculty and thus, though the flute is not an instrument which is expressive of moral… what’s the matter.

— Nothing I’m, I just have to get this envelope you’re sitting on and this, these newspapers…

— Good yes, yes though the flute is not an instrument which is expressive of moral character, it is too exciting, it had not taken this particular rebuke of Aristotle’s to check young Frank Woolworth’s rash ambitions on the instrument. He was becomingly tone deaf, and by eighteen seventy-nine had already crowned a decade of insolvency with the failure of his five-cent store in Utica, New York, where the rewards of leisure were then being advertised in the hapless passage of George Jones through McGuffey’s Fourth Eclectic Reader, last glimpsed as a poor wanderer, without money and without friends. Such are the wages of idleness. I hope every reader will, Bast God damn it keep complaining about how hard it is and then wander around the room while I’m trying to…

— No but I have to leave Mister Gibbs, I told you I…

— Good. I hope every reader will, from this history, take warning, and stamp improvement on the wings of time problem most God damned readers rather be at the movies. Pay attention here bring something to it take something away problem most God damned writing’s written for readers perfectly happy who they are rather be at the movies, come in empty-handed go out the same God damned way what I told him Bast. Ask them to bring one God damned bit of effort want everything done for them they get up and go to the movies I mean I’m the one who told him about agapē Bast, formulated the law of common foci did I tell you that? Promised to tell you about Grynszpan I tell you that?

— No but I have to leave now Mister Gibbs I…

— Bast? Listen the better among us, said I’d tell you what Beethoven listen…

— You did Mister Gibbs now I really wait no don’t try to get up just, I really have to leave… his armload of papers bumped 36 Boxes 200 2-Ply backing past — I’ll be…

— What he wrote the countess of, the better among us Bast?

— Yes…? he got the door poised on one hinge.

— God damn it listen! Bast? The, the better among us bear one another in mind…

For a moment he hesitated there and then put down his papers on the descending stair behind him taking both hands to fit the door closed silent as the dim hall till he made for the stairs, the separating sole of his shoe lending a percussive effect to his haste down them broken only for his pause on the pavement where he stared at the vacant limousine double parked there, abruptly recovering a rhythm double time past a fleet of garbage cans, another, down a curb, curbs, declining at last to a flapping cadence up the wide range of museum steps to find brief echo through the rotunda and recover silence in a sudden glide toward the sculpture gallery, as a horde emerged from the armor collection.

— Bast?

— What? I…

— Not you back there is it? Mister Bast?

— No I, I think so yes… he peered round the marble buttock of a marble Hermes — I mean I, I didn’t expect to see you here Mister Crawley I…

— Can’t say I expected to see you here either no, might have looked for you in the Museum of Natural what the devil’s happened to you, you look…

— Nothing no I’m, I think I cut myself shaving a few times shaving I haven’t had much sleep because I’ve been…

— Good good yes, been working hard have you? Looks like you’ve got something there about ready for me to listen to?

— Yes well not quite no, no you see I…

— Expected to hear something from you before this you know, called your office and your girl said you were out of town on business. Want to get yourself back to your music Mister Bast.