Flying a Red Kite

by Hugh Hood

  Joe begins to get these feelers and they give him the worst six months of his life as each of seven publishing houses reads his three novel-length manuscripts, every editor earnestly searching for something he can “save” — this curious technical term “save” which means “make marketable” — and out of the twenty-one chances, twenty are blanks. But, oh, that glorious twenty-first!

  He clicks when the last of the friendly Salvationists takes a chance on the latest of the three manuscripts, writing a letter to Kingston and taking the manuscript to the higher echelons — the editorial conference — where the gist of his defence is “we won’t make a nickel on this book but with moderate promotion we shouldn’t lose anything, which is nice, and anyway we’ve got a strong fall list and we can afford the risk, and who knows, who knows?”

  “Does he have an agent?”

  “Yeah, but he won’t make trouble, we’re doing him a favour. I tell you, George, in all honesty, this is a real borderline case.”

  “Give them the standard contract and specify the promotional appropriation. Now, where were we?”

  “You wanted to discuss the merger, George.”

  “Sure. Sure. This is a quality house, gentlemen, and I want you to know that the merger won’t affect our trade policy one bit. Not one bit. You may think otherwise and you’re going to be surprised.”

  “Textbooks!” says a disgusted voice in a corner but George ignores the interruption and goes calmly on. Of such is the kingdom of Heaven or so it seems to Joe when he gets word of the acceptance from his agent almost concurrently with the sale of his sixth story, that achieved half-dozen, the magic figure. On his next credit-application he describes himself as “Writer, Teacher.”

  In late May the city sky is topless, clear and blue, you can see through it, and the still oppressive heat of later summer hasn’t yet come on to immobilize everyone in the middle of the day. His examination papers graded, the scholastic year behind him, Joe feels free to take a week to go and see the Canadian publishers who will handle his book as agents for New York, to examine, if he can, the dust-jacket design and the layout of any point-of-sale promotional material that they may have in mind. It really isn’t any of his business and he ought to keep his nose out of it; he wouldn’t dare go near the New York office for a similar purpose. But he has friends in Toronto and things are conducted more informally, so he is willing to take the chance. Also, he thinks with enormous pleasure, he can see David and Helen and tell them all about it, and maybe he can even tell them about Toby, what there is to tell, which is nothing specific except that it is time he got married and she is a girl he knows. After lunch, his first day in, he makes his phone call, forgetful of David’s schedule.

  “He isn’t up yet,” says Helen, “but we both want to see you.”

  “I’d forgotten. And it’s nearly one-thirty.”

  “You know David! He was working very late last night. I guess he finished up around six, six-thirty.”

  “I can’t do that. I have to get it done by midnight or the day is wasted. What’s he working on?”

  “Another novel, to follow the one that’s coming out in August. But he’ll want to tell you about it himself. When are we going to see you?”

  “Tonight, if it’s all right.”

  “Of course it’s all right. Come any time.”

  He tarries downtown, repressing his eagerness for the meeting, until seven o’clock, when he goes to the Morrissey Dining Room for the sake of his recollections, hoping that he will see somebody he knows; it is handy to the studios and the publisher’s Toronto offices and there, sure enough, is Cozy Walker with a nameless girl, a beauty, whom Cozy hastens to exhibit with an air of proprietorship, though without revealing her name or origins.

  “What are you doing in here?” asks Joe. It is a kind of desecration to find Cozy in the place, which is really not for academics.

  “I’m in television, didn’t you know?” says Cozy defensively. “I’m a producer.”

  “No!” says Joe flatly. “No, you’re not!” He doesn’t see how it can be true.

  “Oh, but I am and this is my script assistant. We do ‘Studio,’ the half-hour drama series. And that reminds me, Joe, why don’t you submit to us?”

  “I’ll submit to your script assistant any time, if that’s what she wants.”

  “I mean manuscripts,” says Cozy crossly, “don’t you write plays?”

  “I write fiction. That’s all I know about.”

  “Then you’d better learn something else or you’ll never get anywhere. Haven’t you heard about the anti-novelists? Fiction is dead. What’s wanted now is stuff for the mass media. John Osborne writes for TV.”

  “Sure, and Kingsley Amis writes for the magazines, and have you read his last book?”

  “No.”

  “Read it! All you guys think that writing is dead but it isn’t. I’m doing all right.”

  “You’ve got a novel coming out in August, haven’t you?” says the beautiful script assistant, with respect and envy in her voice. She looks from one man to the other, patently preferring the man in the outmoded medium. “August 25th?”

  “I didn’t think anybody knew. I thought the publishers were keeping it our little secret.”

  “August 25th,” says Cozy with malicious pleasure, “an interesting coincidence. I wonder what David Wallace will make of it.”

  “Why should David make anything out of it?”

  “Because his book comes out on the twenty-sixth.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, oh! And I think I can predict that he won’t like it very much, dear boy. He’s counting on this book to bring him back.”

  “He’s never been away.”

  “Oh ho ho ho. Go and ask him! Just you go and ask him, my uptown friend.”

  “I think I will. Goodbye Cozy, goodbye Miss Script Assistant, I wish I knew your name, but poor old Cozy.…” He stalks out of the place, feeling his face grow red. He hasn’t for several years wanted to punch anybody quite that much. He can quite see the academician as a producer on the parochial little TV network with its ten half-baked writers competing with each other, but not as the doyen and arbiter of the forms of new art. And the remark about David and himself keeps him a little short of breath all the way across town on the streetcar. He doesn’t recover his equanimity until the slow walk across the ravine cools him out. But by the time he knocks on the familiar door he is restored and as eager for the meeting as when he’d planned it.

  Behind the door is David, unchanged, a year or two short of sixty now but the same slight mild-mannered friend of almost a decade, his face creased in a welcoming grin.

  “Come in, come in, Helen’s here and I’ve decided not to work tonight, so we’ve got the whole of it to ourselves. Are you in town for long?”

  “Three or four more days. I wanted to see Fred Callan.”

  “About your book, wonderful, sure. Are they treating you decently?”

  “You know how it is; they aren’t spending a cent over the budget.”

  “It won’t be that way next time,” says David, which is exactly what he ought to say, so why does Joe feel uneasy? “They’ll spend thousands next time. We haven’t heard much about the book, all the same.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” says Joe, heading him off, “tell me about the new novel.” The three of them seat themselves squarely in the same old trio of easy chairs, settling down for what looks like a long night.

  “I’ve seen the jacket,” says David eagerly, “I’ve got one here.” He goes to a writing cabinet in the corner, takes out the brightly-coloured piece of paper and flips it to Joe. “They’ve featured my name on purpose,” he says with naive pride, “and they’re playing up my European reputation in the promotion. You know, I went to the Plaza for a drink with Jack MacCartney the afternoon we signed the contracts. He did all the work
on the book himself. And after we’d had about three drinks he said to me, ‘David, you were a GREAT reputation. What happened?’ The drinks had loosened his tongue, don’t you see? And then he said, ‘I’m going to bring it all back.’ I believe he wants to play God and that’s all right with me because they’re spending a lot of money on the book; they’re giving me a cocktail party on publication day — that’s August twenty-sixth — and they’ve sent everybody advance copies. They’ve got a quote from Bill Faulkner which they’re going to use. He always liked my things. I tell you, Joe, I’m very high on this book. I think perhaps this is the one.”

  “It’s really good, Joey,” says Helen surely, and maybe her testimony is the best of all, and Joe feels more and more uneasy, “it’s his book. You’ll see that the minute you read it. It’s about innocence and it makes Leslie Fiedler look gauche.”

  “You’ve put a lot of yourself into it?” asks Joe lamely.

  “Boy, as Helen says, it’s my book, Joe. This one is for me.”

  “A writer’s career has a perilous shape,” says Joe with a careful smile.

  “That’s right. ‘The triumphant later years, the final apotheosis.’ I had a tough middle period but I think that’s all over now. You’re going to find out, after you’ve finished ‘the early works.’” and at last he puts the awkward question. “When is your book coming out?”

  “Oh, that.” There is nothing for it but to tell him. “As a matter of fact it’s coming out the day before yours.”

  “The day before mine?”

  Helen sits up abruptly in her deep chair, looking from one man to the other wordlessly.

  “August twenty-fifth,” whispers Joe.

  David stands looking at him in amazement. “What do you think you’re up to?”

  “David, you know how it is with a first novel. You don’t tell them; they tell you. It won’t hurt your book.”

  “What a trick!”

  “David, there’ll be twenty novels coming out that week. Mine won’t make any difference to you. You’re famous. Your book will be a publishing event. Nobody’s going to notice mine.”

  “He’s right, David,” says Helen sharply. “It won’t make an atom of difference. You aren’t competing with each other.”

  Without taking his eyes from Joe, he puts her view aside. “We’re all competing. What’s he trying to do to me? There’s only so much review space. Of course we’re competing. The same week, the day before. Why it’s all been planned, hasn’t it? Everybody knows you’re supposed to be my friend. Some friend! I need all the help I can get.” He is terribly upset.

  “When they assigned me that date, I hadn’t any idea when your book was coming out, not the least idea.”

  “And you think they didn’t? I’ve had dealings with George before this. They’re simply trying to kill my book, blanket it with yours. What happens if yours is very good, tell me that?”

  Joe is now a little stung. “It’s pretty good,” he says.

  “It ought to be, for Christ’s sake, you’ve been at it long enough. And then you have the nerve to walk into my house to tell me about it.”

  “David, be fair,” says Helen.

  “Be fair, be fair,” he says, “was anybody fair to my last book? Fairness has nothing to do with it,” and he stands looking at Joe in bewilderment, “and taking the silver,” he quotes, “the chief priests bought with it a potter’s field which is called Haceldama, that is, the field of blood, even to this day.”

  Joe picks it up and the implication that because he’s a Jew he won’t catch the reference freezes him, absolutely freezes him, rooting him motionless in his chair for a second as Helen stares regretfully from one to the other. Talking about myths, he thinks in a flash, talking about being possessed, the guy’s possessed, he’s disappeared into the myth; it’s swallowed him. What am I sitting here for?

  Without a word, waiting until later for reflection and self-doubt to assail him, he walks out of the house, the city spoiled for him, the pleasant life he’d looked forward to rejoining spoiled for him, the name of Judas whispering in his ear as he goes.

  The strings are still playing Handel as he stands before his old “Atwater Kent” with his hand on the useless knob which says TONE. All at once, miraculously, the shriek and rattle in the speaker fade out and the orchestra becomes smooth and lovely, displaying the movement of the master’s mind. He looks blankly at the curtain of faded velvet behind the fretted scrolls and remembers the childlike enthusiasm his father had for all such wonderful contrivances. “It’s a miracle, Babele, listen!” He puts his hand gent­ly on the volume control and turns the sound down, way down, until the strings are only a murmur, and he thinks of the dedication to his book, TO MY FATHER, and thinks to himself, I’m glad it’s for him, for my father, for my real father, and he moves his wrist slightly and the music stops.

  The End of It

  In their eyes I have seen

  the pin men of madness in marathon trim

  race round the track of the stadium pupil.

  — P.K. Page, “The Stenographers”

  “Sixty seconds,” said a voice in the dark.

  “Landy ran the first quarter in a minute flat, he set a killing pace and held it. I never thought he’d hold it.”

  The four men sat silently in the projection room and watched the film of the famous race, “the mile of the century.” They heard the crowd noises on the sound track and began to pulse with them, but the film never showed the crowd, it followed the runners as they circled the track. The rhythm of the crowd noises grew steadily more insistent.

  “There’s Rich Ferguson in third place. He ran his best mile ever and finished third in 4:01 and change. Watch now, here comes Bannister.”

  The runners seemed to be racing around the edge of the screen, leaving the centre blank. You followed the runners intensely and were aware of the great blank space, the stadium infield, at some inferior level of consciousness.

  “You haven’t cut once,” said Sanderson, “you’ve simply kept them in focus, and panned all the way round.” He grew excited. “Watch now, this is the great part!” Bannister picked up a cue from his coach at the end of the third quarter and lengthened his stride.

  “I wanted to zoom in on Landy but we couldn’t. A news photographer caught him when he wobbled. Here it comes, there, there, see that? He had a bad heel that he didn’t tell anyone about.” They all saw him wobble, lose his rhythm momentarily and pick it up as Bannister went by. Perfectly involuntarily the four men began to pound on the arms of their seats and chant in the runner’s rhythm “GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO,” and the sound in the small projection room bounced from the walls and rebounded into their chant, reinforcing it, “GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO,” it was bedlam as Bannister broke the tape and the film ended, the lights came on, they saw where they were, they glanced at each other with embarrassment and amusement. They had been naive; they had let what they did for a living move them.

  “That’s exactly what happened on the day of the race,” said Sanderson, “I was sitting in a beer parlour with a crowd of total strangers, we were glued to the set, and the moment Bannister pulled out to pass, everybody in the room picked up his rhythm. By God, you talk about ritual art, it was ritual, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.” He was shaking with pleasure and excitement. “And it happens every time, that’s the important thing.” He turned to the CBC man from whom they had borrowed the film. “How did you get that, Wilfrid, that’s an import­ant piece of film? You could win prizes with it.”

  “We did win prizes with it, we got an award for photojournalism that same year. It’s a very nice sequence, isn’t it?”

  “Nice? It’s a classic,” said Sanderson. He turned to the others. “See what I told you? It runs four minutes and it’s a single sequence. He doesn’t cut or dissolve at any point, and look what he gets!”

&
nbsp; “It was pure accident,” said the CBC man, Wilfrid Wallace, who felt terribly pleased to hear Sanderson saying these things, the Dean of the Film Board, the best man on documentary since Grierson and Flaherty. Of course, he told himself in qualification, these guys are all either Socialists or nuts. I don’t know why but they have this large bleeding sense of the heart of the folk. Comes of shooting all those closeups of gnarled faces. But he listened carefully to what Sanderson was saying and felt flattered.

  “We’ll have him run it again,” said Philip Sanderson to his editor and cutter, “and I want you to watch and see how the effect builds, it has a starting point, you become aware of the crowd at the same moment every time. I’ve got a stopwatch here and I’m going to clock it. I think it comes towards the end of the second quarter. Just at that instant the audience gets in there with the runners, that’s the first important movement. Then for about a minute we can’t keep our eyes off Landy, but we sense that Bannister is there. We don’t pay any attention at all to Ferguson because we know he isn’t a threat, he’s straining and straining. Even at this distance we can see him strain to stay in the running. But Bannister is hanging off there in third place full of power.” He broke off, struck with another train of thought.