New York Stories

by Bob Blaisdell

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: See page v.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 by Dover Publications, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  New York Stories, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2016, is a new compilation of short stories, reprinted from standard editions. Bob Blaisdell has selected the stories and provided the introductory Note and brief biographies.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Blaisdell, Robert, editor.

  Title: New York stories / edited by Bob Blaisdell.

  Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015049491| ISBN 9780486802534 (paperback) | ISBN 0486802531 (paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. | Short stories, American. | American fiction—19th century. | American fiction—20th century. | BISAC: FICTION / Classics.

  Classification: LCC PS648.N39 N47 2016 | DDC 813/.01083587471—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049491

  Manufactured in the United States

  80253101 2016

  www.doverpublications.com

  Introduction

  BESIDES TAKING PLACE in one of the five boroughs of New York City, what makes a New York short story a “New York” story? After compiling this anthology, I can answer only the obvious: a New York story couldn’t have happened as it happened if it hadn’t occurred in New York City. “I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swanlike sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway . . .” writes Herman Melville’s New York-smitten narrator in “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” But it’s not the landmarks or the names of famous streets that evoke the city; it’s the characters themselves who have expectations of New York: they know or imagine that something special has to happen here. From Rocky’s aunt (in P. G. Wodehouse’s “The Aunt and the Sluggard”) to Yunior’s Papi (in Junot Díaz’s “Negocios”), New York is the place where dreams could come true: living the high life or simply getting a job that will lead to another job up the long ladder of success.

  The three husbands in Edith Wharton’s “The Other Two” must all adapt in a New York minute to modern life and morals. There is no avoiding the strong currents of New York that sweep them all into its swirling pool; New York life is the most distinctive of American lives, and we hear, see and smell its distinctiveness in these stories. In Edwidge Danticat’s “New York Day Women,” a daughter comments on the daily life and habits of her Haitian mother, a member of the ranks of the city’s immigrant women. While New York’s expanse isn’t representable, and its worst sides are mostly out of the picture, the characters sense, hope or fear that everything that’s ever been possible in New York is potentially going to happen.

  Does anybody want to say that New York City is a character in these stories? Well, it’s not; it’s simply the big bold intrusive nonfictional setting. The New York of these stories is New York. It has no stand-in, as it sometimes does in the movies. The geographical references—among them, Harlem, Brighton Beach, Midtown Manhattan, Washington Heights, Wall Street—are electrically charged, and when we readers feel that New York City current, we’re prepared for anything.

  Bob Blaisdell

  New York City

  July 15, 2015

  Acknowledgments

  Danticat, Edwidge. “New York Day Women” from Krik? Krak!, copyright © 1991, 1995 by Edwidge Danticat reprinted by permission of Soho Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Díaz, Junot. “Negocios,” from Drown by Junot Díaz, copyright © 1996 by Junot Díaz. Used by permission of Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Hughes, Langston. “Midsummer Madness” from The Best of Simple by Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1961 by Langston Hughes. Copyright renewed 1989 by George Houston Bass. Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, LLC.

  Parker, Dorothy. “Glory in the Daytime,” copyright © 1933, renewed 1961 by Dorothy Parker, from The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker, edited by Marion Meade. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Parker, Dorothy. “Glory in the Daytime,” from The Complete Dorothy Parker, reprinted by permission of Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.

  Rich, Simon. “Sirens of Gowanus” from The Last Girlfriends on Earth and Other Stories by Simon Rich. Copyright © 2013 by Simon Rich. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company.

  Vapnyar, Lara. “Mistress” from There Are Jews in My House: Stories by Lara Vapnyar. Copyright © 2003 by Lara Vapnyar. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

  Contents

  Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853)

  HERMAN MELVILLE

  Adventures of a Novelist (1896)

  STEPHEN CRANE

  The Other Two (1904)

  EDITH WHARTON

  By Courier (1906)

  O. HENRY

  The Aunt and the Sluggard (1916)

  P. G. WODEHOUSE

  Ardessa (1919)

  WILLA CATHER

  Wings (1920)

  ANZIA YEZIERSKA

  O Russet Witch! (1921)

  F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  Glory in the Daytime (1933)

  DOROTHY PARKER

  Midsummer Madness (1953)

  LANGSTON HUGHES

  New York Day Women (1996)

  EDWIDGE DANTICAT

  Negocios (1996)

  JUNOT DÍAZ

  Mistress (2002)

  LARA VAPNYAR

  Sirens of Gowanus (2013)

  SIMON RICH

  BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER

  A Story of Wall Street (1853)

  Herman Melville

  “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (“scrivener” means scribe, someone paid to copy written materials) is a comedy of peculiar poignancy set in the bustling New York City business world of the early 1850s. Bartleby, “a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of,” is the title character, but the tale is narrated by Bartleby’s boss, a curious-minded, reflective, unnamed “rather elderly man.” Poor Bartleby has become famous for his automatic response to any request for work or cooperation: “I would prefer not to.” We have preferred to use the original Putnam’s Monthly Magazine version of the story published in November and December 1853, before it was collected (and slightly revised) in The Piazza Tales (1856).

  Born in New York in 1819, Melville, besides serving as a sailor as a young man, also worked in banking and teaching. After some literary success, his writing career faltered, and he took a job at the New York Custom House. He died in 1891, overlooked at the time as one of the most significant American authors. Melville was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

  I AM A rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom, as yet, nothing that I know of has ever been written—I mean the law-copyists, or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and, if I pleased, could relate divers histories at which good-natured gentlemen might smile and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener, the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Ba
rtleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable except from the original sources, and, in his case, those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report, which will appear in the sequel.

  Ere introducing the scrivener as he first appeared to me, it is fit I make some mention of myself, my employees, my business, my chambers and general surroundings, because some such description is indispensable to an adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented. Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous even to turbulence at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury or in any way draws down public applause, but, in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds. All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence, my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor, a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion.

  Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins my avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper, much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages, but I must be permitted to be rash here and declare that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new Constitution, as a _____ premature act, inasmuch as I had counted upon a life lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short years. But this is by the way.

  My chambers were upstairs at No. _____ Wall Street. At one end they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious skylight shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom.

  This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call “life.” But, if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered at least a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction, my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade, which wall required no spyglass to bring out its lurking beauties, but, for the benefit of all nearsighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window-panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern.

  At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office boy. First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem names the like of which are not usually found in the Directory. In truth, they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman, of about my own age—that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till 6 o’clock, P.M. or thereabouts; after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which, gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. There are many singular coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the least among which was the fact, that, exactly when Turkey displayed his fullest beams from his red and radiant countenance, just then, too, at that critical moment, began the daily period when I considered his business capacities as seriously disturbed for the remainder of the twenty-four hours. Not that he was absolutely idle or averse to business then; far from it. The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether too energetic. There was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand. All his blots upon my documents were dropped there after twelve o’clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless and sadly given to making blots in the afternoon, but some days he went further and was rather noisy. At such times, too, his face flamed with augmented blazonry, as if cannel coal had been heaped on anthracite. He made an unpleasant racket with his chair; spilled his sandbox; in mending his pens, impatiently split them all to pieces and threw them on the floor in a sudden passion; stood up and leaned over his table, boxing his papers about in a most indecorous manner, very sad to behold in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve o’clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature, too, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easily to be matched—for these reasons I was willing to overlook his eccentricities, though indeed, occasionally, I remonstrated with him. I did this very gently, however, because, though the civilest, nay, the blandest and most reverential of men in the morning, yet, in the afternoon he was disposed, upon provocation, to be slightly rash with his tongue—in fact, insolent. Now, valuing his morning services as I did, and resolved not to lose them—yet, at the same time, made uncomfortable by his inflamed ways after twelve o’clock—and being a man of peace, unwilling by my admonitions to call forth unseemly retorts from him, I took upon me one Saturday noon (he was always worse on Saturdays) to hint to him, very kindly, that perhaps, now that he was growing old, it might be well to abridge his labors; in short, he need not come to my chambers after twelve o’clock, but, dinner over, had best go home to his lodgings and rest himself till teatime. But no; he insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His countenance became intolerably fervid, as he oratorically assured me—gesticulating with a long ruler at the other end of the room—that if his services in the morning were useful, how indispensable, then, in the afternoon?

  “With submission, sir,” said Turkey, on this occasion, “I consider myself your right-hand man. In the morning I but marshal and deploy my columns, but in the afternoon I put myself at their head, and gallantly charge the foe, thus”—and he made a violent thrust with the ruler.

  “But the blots, Turkey,” intimated I.

  “True; but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old. Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely urged against gray hairs. Old age—even if it blot the page—is honorable. With submission, sir, we both are getting old.”

  This appeal to my fellow feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all events, I saw that go he would not. So I made up my mind to let him stay, resolving, nevertheless, to see to it that, during the afternoon, he had to do with my less important papers.

  Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers—ambition and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions, hissed rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked. Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get this table to suit him. He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits of pasteboard, and at last went
so far as to attempt an exquisite adjustment by final pieces of folded blotting paper. But no invention would answer. If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table lid at a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote there like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his desk, then he declared that it stopped the circulation in his arms. If now he lowered the table to his waistbands and stooped over it in writing, then there was a sore aching in his back. In short, the truth of the matter was Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted any thing, it was to be rid of a scrivener’s table altogether. Among the manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed, I was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a ward politician, but he occasionally did a little business at the Justices’ courts, and was not unknown on the steps of the Tombs. I have good reason to believe, however, that one individual who called upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he insisted was his client, was no other than a dun, and the alleged title deed, a bill. But, with all his failings, and the annoyances he caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man to me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed in a gentlemanly sort of way, and so, incidentally, reflected credit upon my chambers. Whereas, with respect to Turkey. I had much ado to keep him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily, and smell of eating houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were execrable, his hat not to be handled. But while the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was another matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him, but with no effect. The truth was, I suppose, that a man of so small an income could not afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time. As Nippers once observed, Turkey’s money went chiefly for red ink. One winter day, I presented Turkey with a highly respectable-looking coat of my own—a padded gray coat of a most comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons. But no; I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and blanketlike a coat had a pernicious effect upon him—upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a man whom prosperity harmed.