Хелен Девитт - Some Trick - Thirteen Stories

Glory!

He dashed off an e-mail to Gelman expressing his undying gratitude. Gift horse and all that, he could not quite see why the x axis ended at 70: an odd choice given that, when number of draws n=100, 0–37 and 63–100 are in fact symmetrical gaps — would one not want the symmetry to be visible? (But then he could not quite remember what he had said at the dark hour of 3 am.)

He scrutinized the code, yes, yes, yes, it was a simple matter of changing total to 100, and one might also, perhaps, want to have n in all multiples of 10 up to 100? Hey presto!

There’s an experience that’s common enough. One picks up a book, begins to read. When one looks up 5 hours have passed. One sits in a cold train on a siding; snow falls softly on a stubbled field.

5 hours later Peter found himself in a Korean diner flanked by 5 robots.

One of the robots was talking about Clovis, who ascended the throne at the age of 15.

It’s important to be rational.

Correlation is not causation, no. But what is to be done? What he has to go on is that, after a gap of over a year, all five robots had started talking again after this extraordinarily kind, helpful and above all elegant solution from Andrew Gelman, exactly the sort of assistance he might have hoped to find in a competent editor. But if, for the sake of argument, a book is worth a significant six figures or low seven, and if, for the sake of argument, a book depends in the first instance on being in communication with the robots, we can quantify the value of working with a Gelman-equivalent. But the first robot had spoken after he walked out of the

diner!!!!!!!!! Jim!!!!!!!!! There had been a man named Jim—

Ought he, perhaps, to go rushing back to, oh God, the other

But no, Jim (he was pretty sure it was Jim) would have gone back to his office. Ought he, in all decency, to drop off the correctly labelled chart at the office? Or call, perhaps he should

There was the matter of the briefcase, but it had only contained print-outs of PDFs which were on the laptop, so there was no particular need to retrieve, but

Wait . Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.

As we were saying , before we were so rudely interrupted, the first robot made its presence known after one had walked out on Jim. We are unhappily not in the position of being able to run randomised blind trials. We can only proceed, with the utmost caution, on the evidence available.

A tentative conclusion is that there are compelling financial , as well as intellectual , reasons to abstain from communication with Jim. (Note that Jim had strictly confined his contribution to the financial element. ) There would appear to be compelling financial reasons to communicate with Andrew Gelman (his friend ), except that the man is not on the payroll of an agency or publisher. But .

But but but but but.

Surely .

If he understands the matter correctly, the plucky underdog, his first publisher, inveterate enemy that it is of e iπ , can’t compel him to give them the second book.

Is this not what is meant by leverage?

Can he not , in fact, make any deal conditional on exclusive consultation with his friend (at a suitable fee) or some suitably numerate and computerate substitute?

He rather thinks he can .

Benny Bergsma didn’t like to talk about his father, but people who had loved the Automatika series as children always wanted to hear about him. If the subject came up he did not know how to back away.

What he would say was that his father did not discuss the creative process.

He would say, if pushed: “If a contract has to be notarized he won’t sign it.” He was always pushed.

He would say, if pushed further: “If there’s going to be a movie, he doesn’t want to go to the premiere.” He was always pushed further.

What it meant was that his Craigslist ad, offering thirty square feet of subprime real estate in Benny’s loft in Dumbo, had to be reposted eight weeks in a row, while Benny sifted through the hundreds, nay thousands of applicants who proved, upon investigation, to have read and loved the Automatika series in their rugrat days. So the Boy from Iowa was a shoo-in. Gil had not read the Automatika series because it was not set in New York.

There are 7 billion people on the planet. Of these, a mere 17 million have the privilege of living in the New York Greater Metropolitan Area. If you want stories about people who don’t live in New York, was his attitude, real life offers such stories in appalling abundance. And if you are one of the real lifers who happen not to be one of the 17 million, reading about New York is as close, pending a change of luck, as you are going to get . Why would you read a book set anywhere else ? [1] Except, obviously, to avoid looking totally uneducated when you actually get to New York. Kafka, Borges, Proust — these you should read.

As a non-fan Gil had no interest in Jaap Bergsma per se, but rooming with the embittered alcoholic son of the author of a cult series, this is very New York. Very unIowa.

He paid the deposit by PayPal, turned up a week later with his backpack, unloaded it on the bed and headed back to Manhattan.

It was his first day in New York! And on his very first day , when he hadn’t even un packed , he saw Harvey Keitel eating a pancake in a diner! A diner in the Village ! Needless to say he immediately entered the diner, not to intrude on Mr. Keitel, obviously, but simply to order the identical pancake.