Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (33 page)

Not long after she had disposed of the would-be Religion editor, she met a man named Lester Kranitt, who said he supported himself while writing his novel by working for a company called After Dinner, Inc. According to Kranitt, After Dinner, Inc. earned a great deal of money by providing after-dinner speakers with well-written speeches on any subject. “It’s really
too
sordid,” said Kranitt, smiling at the recollection. “I work for a very crude man who never says anything to me but ‘Hey, champ, can you knock me out eight hundred words on the place of foundation garments in our private enterprise system by six tonight?’ or ‘Hey, champ, why don’t you sit yourself down and work me up the two thousand words Eddie O’Brien will have to say at a testimonial dinner called Eddie O’Brien’s Twenty-five Years Behind the Wheel of a Five-Passenger Checker, by ten tomorrow morning.

Marlene listened to Kranitt for about ten minutes before recognizing him as a man who had once waited on her at Bloomingdale’s. She said, “Listen, champ, why don’t you knock me out fifty words on brushing off a phony.” If he had been a decent phony, she thought later, he would have at least quoted her a price for a brush-off speech.

AFTER all these experiences, Marlene was understandably skeptical when, at a party at Bernie Mohler’s summer place near East Hampton, a young man named Roland Magruder answered her question about his occupation in the usual way. “What
kind
of writer?” she said, suspiciously. She could not believe that he had not heard how difficult she was to impress with this approach.

“A freelance writer,” said Magruder, who was quite aware of how difficult she was to impress with this approach, and had even heard odds quoted on the matter.

“What kind of freelance writer?” asked Marlene.

“A sign writer.”

“A sign painter?”

“No,” said Magruder. “I write signs. Cities retain me to write signs on a freelance basis. I specialize in traffic work. ‘Yield Right of Way’ is a good example.”

“Somebody
wrote
‘Yield Right of Way’?” asked Marlene.

“I wrote ‘Yield Right of Way,’ ” said Magruder, permitting a tone of pride to creep into his voice. “Do you think something like ‘Yield Right of Way’ writes itself ? Do you think it was written by the gorilla who installed the signs on the Expressway? He would have probably written ‘Let the Other Guy Keep in Front of Ya.’ Have you been going under the impression that ‘Vehicles Weighing Over Five Tons Keep Right’ was composed by Robert F. Wagner, Jr.?”

“But these messages are obvious,” argued Marlene.

“You would have probably said that it was obvious for Brigham Young to say ‘This is the place’ when the Mormons reached Utah, or for Pétain to say ‘They shall not pass,’ or for MacArthur to say ‘I shall return.’ I suppose you think those lines just happened to come out of their mouths, without any previous thought or professional consultation. I think, by the way, if I may say so, that my ‘No Passing’ says everything ‘They shall not pass’ says, and without succumbing to prolixity.”

“You mean to say you’re being paid for writing ‘Stop’ and ‘One Way’ and ‘Slow’?” asked Marlene. She tried to include as much sarcasm as possible in her voice, but Magruder seemed to take no notice.

“A certain economy of style has never been a handicap to a writer,” he said. “On the other hand, while it’s true that traffic signs are a vehicle that permits a pithiness impossible in most forms, I do longer pieces. ‘Next Train for Grand Central on Track Four’ is one of mine—at the Times Square subway station. There’s another one at the Times Square station that you certainly haven’t seen yourself but that I think has a certain flair: ‘This Is Your Men’s Room; Keep It Clean.’ I’ve heard several people talk of that one as the ultimate expression of man’s inability to identify with his group in an urban society.”

That was almost too much for Marlene. She had found herself beginning to believe Magruder—his self-confidence was awesome, and, after all, who would have the gall to take credit for “One Way” if he hadn’t written it?—but bringing in sociological criticism was a challenge to credulity. Just then, Bernie Mohler passed by on his way to the patio and said, “Nice job on ‘World’s Fair Parking,’ Roland.”

“What did you have to do with World’s Fair parking?” asked Marlene.

“That’s it,” said Magruder. “ ‘World’s Fair Parking.’ It’s on the Expressway. Do you like it?”

Before Marlene could answer, a blond girl joined them and asked, “Was that your ‘This Is Water Mill—Slow Down and Enjoy It’ I saw on Highway 27, Roland?”

Magruder frowned. “I’m not going to get involved in that cutesy stuff just to satisfy the Chamber of Commerce types,” he said. “I told the town board that ‘Slow Down’ says it all, and they could take it or leave it.”

“I thought your ‘No Parking Any Time’ said it all,” remarked a tall young man with a neat beard. “I’ve heard a lot of people say so.”

“Thanks very much,” Magruder said, looking down at the floor modestly.

“Oh, did you do that?” Marlene found herself asking.

“It wasn’t much,” said Magruder, still looking at the floor.

“You don’t happen to know who did the big ‘
NO
’ sign at Coney Island?” Marlene asked. “The one that has one ‘
NO
’ in huge letters and then lists all the things you can’t do in smaller letters next to it?” Marlene realized she had always been interested in the big “
NO
” sign.

“I introduced the Big ‘
NO
’ concept at the city parks several years ago,” said Magruder. “Some people say it’s a remarkable insight into modern American urban life, but I think that kind of talk makes too big a thing of it.”

“Oh, I don’t,” said Marlene. “I think it’s a marvellous expression of the negativism of our situation.”

“Well, that’s enough talking about me,” said Magruder. “Can I get you another drink?”

“I’m really tired of this party anyway,” said Marlene.

“I’ll drive you home,” said Magruder. “We can cruise by a ‘Keep Right Except to Pass’ sign, if you like. It’s on the highway just in front of my beach house.”

“Well, O.K.,” said Marlene, “but no stopping.”

“I wrote that,” Magruder said, and they walked out the door together.

1965

PHILIP HAMBURGER

CONTEMPORARY WRITERS VI: AN INTERVIEW WITH GRIP SANDS

T
HE
interview with Grip Sands, three-time winner of the coveted Alma M. Halloran Fictive Award (for his novels “Lud,” “Fust,” and “Drime”) was held at five-thirty one morning in his loft workroom-bedroom-living room on Manhattan’s lower East Side, within sight of the ever-poetic span of the Brooklyn Bridge. Sands works at night and sleeps by day, and the interview was conducted between the hours of his most intense concentration and his hours of rest. He appeared exhausted yet exhilarated. He is short, squat, and somewhat dishevelled, with thick eyebrows and piercing green eyes. He was dressed in black leather pants, a black leather jacket, and highly polished black boots. Sands and his boots are inseparable, as inseparable as Sands and the strange, private lexicon of obscenities he employs in ordinary conversation. Sands wears his boots everywhere—to literary conferences, to prize conclaves, and to bed. Bed consists of a mattress on the floor of the loft, with no pillow. The loft is sparely furnished: an unpainted worktable piled high with supplies of green copy paper, on which Sands writes in red ink, and, in one corner, a refrigerator. The floor of the loft was covered with crumpled mounds of discarded pieces of copy paper. They lent the otherwise barren room the appearance of being a mossy glen in a thick forest. Sands was seated on the mattress, reading galleys of his forthcoming fictive effort, “Zwer.” Several volumes of Proust were visible on top of the refrigerator, lying beside a half-eaten pomegranate.

I
NTERVIEWER:
You have been accused of a certain deliberate obscurity, not only in connection with the time continuum but with relation to the personnel of your novels. Your non-beings appear to have more life-force than your beings, and even at times to be interchangeable with them. What are you saying to us?

S
ANDS:
I should like very much to get my hands on the blarfs who accuse me of obscurity, much less deliberate obscurity. Their watchword would appear to be crand. I am saying what I am saying, and each driggle must figure the matter out for himself, depending on the time, the place, the barometric pressure, and the nearest horoscope. To read “Fust,” for instance, without a horoscope would be sheer groozle. And yet many try, and sink. I lay great store by horoscopes, mostly for their paramorphic value. They cut through the paninvisibility of non-being. We are left with the dark shadow of cartilage. The nub of the matter.

I
NTERVIEWER:
We know that each writer secretly whispers to himself in his innermost places, awake or asleep, that this time he has touched the truth—zeroed in, you might say.

S
ANDS:
To me, eternity is eggshells. The whites are pure mag, and the yolks—well, I won’t even consider the yolks. They are beneath contempt. But the shells present an entirely different problem. We have the problem of poise—absolutely essential—and, with it, the delicate elaboration of personality, or, in the case of “Lud,” non-personality. One exudes. Otherwise, there is nothing—not even the void.

I
NTERVIEWER:
Do the city streets inspire you? I mean, do you prowl?

S
ANDS:
Inscrutably. Inscrutably, rather than haphazardly or continuously. The inspiration, once again, is eggshells. They rise beneath the feet and touch off myriad images. The prowling must be done under cover of darkness, and the feet themselves provide the motivation. One either senses this sort of thing or one doesn’t. The eggshells are everywhere, but one must feel them. Lower Broadway bleeds with eggshells. There the poise requires deftness, murim, and a calm spirit. If one is unhurried, collected, one is safe, one’s inspiration is safe. Jar the balance and there is a crack in eternity.

I
NTERVIEWER:
That would be irreparable?

S
ANDS:
Irreparable. There are no second chances. The wheel turns and stops—red or black, good or ill. And, of course, there is the question of money. The foundations and the grants help. I loathe them, and I loathe the gurds who sit in boardroom splendor and award them, but I never turn one down. The first grant is always the hardest. Then they pour in; some blick recommends me one year, I recommend the blick the next. It is a question of poise, almost vegetable. They say travel to England, France, Spain. I say no. I stay here. My terms. Fleep!

I
NTERVIEWER:
Do you revise much?

S
ANDS:
As an exercise in the art of interregnum. The floor of the studio attests to the continuously heightened and renewed perceptions and non-perceptibles.

I
NTERVIEWER:
Do you mingle much with other writers?

S
ANDS:
Sparsely.

I
NTERVIEWER:
But you do mingle occasionally—conferences, creative-writing gatherings, and so on. Do you derive much inspiration, if any, from these encounters?

S
ANDS:
The average writer is a brape. I observe them to renew my contempt. And to replenish the wellspring. The fallow times, you know, are not kinsel. Bears do it. Inspiration often derives from one’s low opinion of those around one, so I occasionally drive to the gas station and ask the man to fill up the tank. Then back here to aloneness and the eternal, internal me. You are the first person I have talked to since beginning “Zwer,” and you may be the last.

I
NTERVIEWER:
“Zwer” has already evinced almost universal interest. Can you tell me something about it—its themes and goals?

S
ANDS:
In “Zwer,” the root is the branch. It will win all the prizes, but for all the wrong reasons. In “Zwer,” the personae ascend in descension. The interstices become the corpus. Form follows reason to the city limits, and then explodes with malevolent magnanimity. The bulldozers appear to triumph, but the squeak of the mouse is heard over the land.

I
NTERVIEWER:
Where would you say the novel in general is heading? I mean, this would come down, I suppose, to shape and form and content. You must have given this a good deal of thought.

S
ANDS:
The problem centers acutely on the extricular. Gravy boats, bronzed booties, canoes—that sort of thing. Try to avoid these tactiles and the novel will foist. Slowly at first, but with increasing blushes. That is one thing I am certain of, up to a point. Characters must become egressors. The costume is without meaning, the setting a mere ball of fire, and the dialogue quirp. People often halrow and urge you to try that one on your cigar box. I tell them to emerge, shed, blacken with soot. Cold cream is dodo. Definitely. “Zwer’s” most powerful scenes are illuminated with the passion of an underwater gazebo. The inundated summerhouse! It is a summing up, and nothing will ever be the same. Follow the green arrow and take the wrong turn. Most of them are rotten.

I
NTERVIEWER:
In other words, you are optimistic.

S
ANDS:
Insofar as the circle bisects the square and leaves it dangling. And with respect to the pastoral mutations. The rest is queel. But there are some bright spots—Lipton in Kansas City, struggling with his penetrobes, and poor Kenneeley being bitten alive in Algiers.

I
NTERVIEWER:
Kenya, I believe.

S
ANDS:
You are right. Kenya.

I
NTERVIEWER:
Can you tell me something of your origins?

S
ANDS:
Bridgeport was pure treem. The noxious workmen and their hard-boiled eggs. Puget Sound was drave, and New Orleans grob. Heady stuff. My parents were one-burner electric stove, here today and gone. St. Louis, Denver, the transcontinental bit, and then the breakaway. Collapse and recovery and the dusty road to the center. The self-initiated self. It came one night and knocked, and I said, “Enter.” And here I am.