Novelists

by C. P. Boyko

  All Brownhoffer knew was that his genius had finally been recognized by at least one advanced institution of higher learning and one avant-garde publishing house. He had been published; and that put him, not by degree but qualitatively, above his students.

  “A difficult book to write,” he said, “and a difficult book to read. But worth the effort, I daresay, for those capable of expending it, eh?”

  Christin risked a grunt of agreement.

  He chuckled conspiratorially. “You realize, of course, that great art is seldom—accessible. Art, if it is art, is transformative; and transformation is never easy. Indeed it is positively unpleasant.”

  Now Christin nodded readily, for the reading of Gravy Train had certainly been that.

  Brownhoffer looked at his student more carefully, and was surprised to find on her face lines of intelligence where previously he had found only shrewish pertinacity and impudence. It occurred to him now that these might be the very qualities of his ideal reader. His manner became expansive and benignant.

  “Literature is an act of communication—an act of communion, one might even say. Without finely tuned receivers, even the most powerful transmissions go unheard. I am quite fortunate in that my audience, though small, has always been receptive. Of course, all true art finds its proper home eventually. One need not despise one’s detractors, for their detraction only proves their unfitness for one’s message. The seed does not curse the sand, but goes on seeking the soil.”

  “But Dr. Brownhoffer,” said Christin, after giving this aphorism a respectful pause, “what’s the point of revising, then, if everything finds its own audience? Isn’t one kind of novel just as good as the next?”

  If Christin had asked this question an hour ago, Brownhoffer might have inflicted upon her A Dance to the Music of Time; now he laughed indulgently.

  “It depends on whether you believe that one kind of audience is as good as the next.”

  Christin sighed. After six months in Brownhoffer’s class, she knew that the only audience worth striving for was the one that Brownhoffer himself represented—and he hated her writing.

  “Yes,” he said, “doubtless there is an audience for everything. There is even an audience for ‘He held the door open for her’—probably even a large audience, and one that will pay you handsomely and bedeck you with laurels and literary prizes for giving it prose that skims across the surface of the mind without raising a ripple. If that audience is your ambition, Miss Shane, you may yet have a bright future ahead. But I feel I must be honest with you.”

  Her face loomed out of the mists in his mind and became almost clear before his eyes. The rain, which he had at no point noticed, had now stopped, but drops still clung to her brow and eyelashes and caught the light from a nearby window like tiny diamonds. A great tenderness welled up within him, both for her, and, at the thought of the kindness he was about to do, for himself.

  “If your goal is to be good—well. I must tell you that there is no hope. You have worked hard; you have done your best; you are not to blame. There is no crank that you can turn to produce literature. There is no dictionary for translating the obvious phrase into the lyrical one. There is no formula for creativity. One either has the capacity to become an artist, or one does not. You do not. I believe that my candor will save you much heartache in the future. There is no need to thank me. It is the least I can do—for a fan.”

  And her face faded from his consciousness as he continued on his way, humming tunelessly and munching his lips.

  Clint Lewes appeared distressed. Indeed, he looked like a husband in a Victorian novel awaiting news of a parturition. He paced or sat fidgeting in various twisted postures, chain-smoking cigarettes and plucking non-existent flakes of tobacco from his lips. Occasionally he leapt with sudden resolve across the study to seize some knick-knack or framed photograph, turning it over in his hands with bewilderment and rue. He muttered continuously to himself, but a careful analysis would have revealed that his sentences did not parse. His gaze roved wildly around the room, but there was one object it did not touch; and that was the blank sheet of paper on his writing desk.

  He had done everything; there was nothing left to be done. He had retrieved, opened, read twice, and verbosely answered that day’s fan mail. He had couriered that week’s three and next week’s four book reviews to the eleven newspapers publishing them, but had not yet received a new batch of novels to be reviewed. He had long ago mailed out that season’s stack of grant applications. He had written thank-you postcards to the facilitators of last year’s writers’ retreats and registered for next year’s. There were four weeks till his next writer-in-residency at the public library, and he had already selected the books and quotations with which he would decorate his office. He had completed the always unpleasant task of editing his latest book, a collection of topical essays. The last literary festival was a month behind him and the next a month away. He had offered himself to a panel discussion on the Future of the Novel that was ostensibly being held at an elementary school in a neighboring province, but had not yet heard back from the organizers, a klatch of ignorant and unprofessional fifth-graders. And he had done all that could be done to promote his most recent novel, including countless interviews for television, radio, and print, and innumerable readings in every kind of venue. He was expected to give one more twenty-minute performance next week at a retirement home, but he had already memorized forty-five minutes of text, complete with the pauses and small charming errors that would make his delivery seem unpracticed, even, in the words of one reviewer, “almost extempore.” But otherwise, the invitations to talk about himself, about his influences, and about his work had dried up. They always did, eventually. No one was interested in Clint Lewes anymore. There was nothing else for it but to write another novel.

  But what did one write a novel about? Though he had written thirty-seven of them, he had no idea how to go about it. Did one begin with a character? His family and friends were all bone-weary of being cast, more or less undisguised, in his romans à clef, and no one else came to mind. Did one begin with a setting? The study of a popular but critically underappreciated—doctor, perhaps? Or did one begin instead with an event, and allow one’s setting and characters to take the shape dictated by the exigencies of plot? He clutched at this proposition hungrily, as if he had discovered one of the eternal laws of literature, and looked around the room for events. But nothing moved. He ran to the window and was disgusted to see only two children digging holes in the lot across the street; he had already written a novel about spelunking. He ransacked his past for memories of things that sometimes happened to human beings, but his life and the lives of everyone he knew seemed uncannily devoid of circumstance. The single most common question he was asked by fans and interviewers was the one about where his ideas came from; and though he was careful to expunge from his answers all trace of amusement, condescension, or boredom, the question had always struck him as rather stupid. Today, however, he would have paid any price to remember what his answers had been. Where did he get his ideas from? Experience? Imagination? Books?

  He had torn open the dictionary and was contemplating the dramatic possibilities of the word “partridge” when the telephone rang; he had forgotten to unplug it. He lunged for the receiver as though he would devour it.

  “Hello, yes, Clint Lewes speaking, who is calling please, hello?”

  It was his agent, Rob Robson. Did Clint happen to know offhand of any out-of-print books that might be reissued? Harbor Mountain were doing a series of Forgotten Classics for their fall list.

  Clint did not; but he said, “Yes, certainly, lots—when do you need them by?”

  “Oh, no rush.”

  Rob Robson was an unusually competent and effective agent, but Clint had no way of knowing that, having never had an incompetent one. Besides, he was constitutionally incapable of believing that everything possible was bei
ng done at all times to keep his name in the public mind. Therefore, Rob’s unflappable lack of urgency acted on him like an allergen, throwing his entire body into a state of agitation and near-panic.

  “Will tomorrow be soon enough?”

  That was how Clint Lewes came to be writing a scholarly introduction to Gravy Train when, a month later, Rob Robson called him about the Godskriva Prize.

  After a frantic process of sortilege and cross-reference in the university library’s stacks, he had seized upon Gravy Train as one of the most obscure novels of the century; it was a small step from there to the conclusion that it was one of the most overlooked and underappreciated novels of the century; and from there no step at all to the conviction that he was the man best equipped to rescue it from oblivion and establish it firmly in the canon—while simultaneously establishing Clint Lewes as one of the preeminent literary theorists of his age: the man who had discovered Brownhoffer.

  His enthusiasm for this project had suffered a blow when, in the course of clearing the copyright, he had discovered that Brownhoffer was not dead, but teaching creative writing at a seedy community college. There was something disreputable and depressing about living neglected authors, perhaps because there were so many of them. Also, being alive, they were liable to say things that you had not foreseen, things that did not conform to your image of them or to your interpretation of their work; they did not belong utterly to you the way dead authors did. Clint had spoken briefly to Brownhoffer on the phone, and had found him at first suspicious and rude, then pompous and magniloquent. So, for the time being, he abandoned the idea of the critical biography and confined himself to a close exegesis of the novel, written in a tone, simultaneously abusive and self-congratulatory, that would hopefully make readers feel simultaneously stupid and grateful.

  Clint was familiar with the Godskriva Prize as the most prestigious of all the literary awards he had never been nominated for. It was bestowed each year on the best novel published in any human language, and brought with it a sum of cash commensurate with its prestige. This year, according to Rob Robson, the Godskriva Collective had announced, or were about to announce, a new prize, to be awarded once only—for the best novel of all time.

  Did Clint want to be on the jury?

  Clint hesitated; wouldn’t his being on the jury disqualify his own novels from being chosen? But he did not hesitate long. The certain prospect of power outweighed the uncertain possibility of recognition, however distinguished. And in some dim recess of his heart, Clint realized that he was not the sort of novelist who won literary prizes. His was an inferior product; that was why he had to spend so much time and effort advertising himself. How he envied men like Brownhoffer!—geniuses who could produce in a vacuum great works of literature that needed no one to publicize or defend them!

  Which gave him an idea.

  “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Great. I’ll submit your name to the committee.”

  “You mean they didn’t ask for me?”

  “I’m sure they’re just waiting to hear you’re available.”

  But this was insufficiently definite for Clint, who immediately launched his own personal campaign for selection. He flew to Oslo and hand-delivered copies of his books to the Godskriva directors; he let it be known, through the medium of his book reviews, that he was underoccupied, widely read, and in a reflective, munificent mood; he took everyone he had ever met out for lunch and casually pumped them for information; he sent telegrams to everyone who had ever written a novel and reminded them how fond he was of their work. His efforts paid off. The members of the jury-selection committee, terrified of committing any unpopular or controversial choice, solicited the opinions of a wide array of consultants; these consultants in turn hired their own consultants, and so on, till nearly every person who had ever written, published, or read a novel had been given a chance to nominate someone they believed likely to vote for the novels they had written, published, or read. Clint, by sheer force of his unrelenting ubiquity, was on several people’s lists. His name, with fifty others, was put in a hat; and his, with only eleven others, was pulled out.

  Two hundred novels, all acknowledged classics, were distributed to the jury in advance. They were asked to submit their ten favorites—as well as up to five novels not on the list—as the foundation for further discussion. The organizers, in collating this initial data, were amazed and appalled to discover that none of the jurors’ lists overlapped by so much as one title, and that all of them had exercised the option of adding the maximum five books of their own choosing—all except one juror, who ignored the instructions and submitted ten new titles and none from the original longlist. The Godskriva staff scrambled to find translations of all these esoteric works in the ten native languages of the twelve jurors, and when these were not available, scrambled to commission translations into English at least. Finally, a week before the jury was convened, the jurors were supplied with and asked to read all 175 novels on this not very short shortlist.

  One did. Ilse Mienemin arrived at the hotel in Oslo bleary-eyed, misanthropic, and a philistine. Instead of attending the reception that evening, she went straight to bed. Next morning when the jury was convened, it seemed to her that everyone knew everyone else’s name and that they were all on friendly terms; Ilse, only Ilse, remained on the outside. This feeling of isolation—all too familiar to her from years of sitting alone in rooms writing novels—worsened her mood but strengthened her resolve. She would not agree with anything any of these people had to say. They were not real novelists. A real novelist understood that art required sacrifices; that to write about the world one must be removed from the world; that one could either enjoy life or write about life, but not both; that good work was only produced in the crucible of an unhappy existence; that originality and beauty only developed in isolation. Ilse chose to be dead to life, that her work might live forever. Yes; she was a martyr for her art. But then she looked again at the piles of novels littered across the table and around the room and at the fat stack of notes she had taken about them, and she drowned beneath a wave of futility and despair.

  Clint suggested that they begin their deliberations. No one objected to his assuming the role of foreman. It seemed natural that one of the three native speakers of English, the lingua franca of the jury, should take charge; the confidence with which they spoke lent them an air of authority that the others could not compete with (except perhaps Max Ür, who, to conceal and compensate for his poor understanding of English, which rendered him effectively deaf, launched periodically into impassioned diatribes on the superiority of good literature to bad, the importance of integrity and sincerity in an author, and the supreme value of truth). Of the other two English speakers, neither was interested in leading the discussion; one was insane, and the other drunk.

  Buchanan Dewan had, at twenty, and despite the protests of his friends and family, married the prostitute he was in love with. This act made him a social pariah; and his wife, who had married him in order to infiltrate a better, richer class of people, felt that she had been tricked. After five years of intense domestic misery, she took all their money and ran away to the Bahamas, leaving him with nothing but syphilis. That had been forty years ago. To feed himself he had turned to novel-writing, not being suited for any other type of work. Unfortunately, his reputation in literary circles progressed as slowly as the disease, and therefore in inverse proportion to his capacity to enjoy it. He was now in the advanced stages of both senility and fame. He had constructed in his mind a resplendent Fairyland to which he escaped for most hours of the day from the hardships and disappointments of his life. To his admirers he seemed a sort of bodhisattva, giggling and sighing forgivingly as he contemplated the foibles of the universe; in fact, he was playing checkers with elves.

  Tiffany Pram had been writing in full spate when she was called to Oslo. After months of struggle and false starts and chewing her pen,
she had finally made a breakthrough; the story had taken off, the characters had come to life, and the sentences seemed almost to be writing themselves. Yet she was no mere spectator: every page bore the unique stamp of her intelligence and humanity. She was, every day at her desk, plumbing the profundities of her own genius. This was the best thing she had ever written, the best thing she would ever write. And then she had been torn away from it. From a creative deity presiding over an entire universe, she had suddenly been reduced to a middle-aged woman on an airplane asking three times for extra ice. She was not a dreamer awakening, but a fully waking mind being abducted by a dream. It was drizzling in Oslo, but the fog and the rain-blurred streets felt like symptoms of her own straitened perceptions. The real world was unreal; what was worse, it was trivial. In her novel, every line of dialogue was character-revealing, every action was pregnant with its consequences, every gesture was imbued with symbolical significance; here, outside her novel, there was nothing but small talk, false smiles, and nervous tics. Would she like a porter to help with her bags? Would she like to eat a little something before the reception? Would she like to meet Mr. Buchanan Dewan? She blinked incredulously at the cardboard figures cavorting about her, pelting her with their inane solicitudes like television commercials come horribly to life. She got drunk, and resolved to stay that way till the nightmare was over.

  Clint suggested that they begin at the top of the list and work their way down. Was Novel #1 the best novel of all time? After ten seconds of silence, everyone began talking at once. Clint motioned for silence, then granted the floor to Guntur Kunthi Kesukaan, who seemed in greatest need of it: he was holding up both hands and writhing and hopping in place—and anyway had not stopped talking.