The Late John Marquand (32 page)

Joe Greene played an important part in the production of
Melville Goodwin, U.S.A
., but not as important a part as he could have. When he had read the first draft of the book in manuscript, Greene felt that Marquand's main trouble was his depiction of the Pentagon. “Marquand,” Greene wrote to Stanley Salmen, “has created a Pentagon that simply never existed. He has somehow carried up into the postwar years a Washington brass and headquarters attitude which has not existed since the Twenties.” John had filled his fictional Pentagon with military theoreticians and strategists, men more experienced in desk and laboratory work than in battle, even though, as Greene pointed out, “Hardly anyone has held a high Army office in the Pentagon since 1943 or 1944 who doesn't have a whole chestful of battle ribbons.” Marquand had also, Greene felt, made the Pentagon much too stiff and formal, with Army officers calling each other “sir” or using military titles, and he had created a vast social difference between two-, three-, and four-star generals. None of this resembled the real Pentagon, where officers of all rank
called each other by their first names and where any general had as much social standing as another.

Marquand was interested in how social divisions are created and maintained and as a young lieutenant in World War I had detected nuances that put officers who were West Point graduates in one class and those who had received their commissions at Officer Training School, or in the field, in another. This degree of difference, which might have existed in 1917, had disappeared long before 1950, Greene pointed out, and non-West Pointers now so heavily outnumbered West Pointers in the United States Army that if any officer tried to high-hat another, on the basis that one had been to the “Academy” and the other had not, he would find himself in serious difficulty. Greene even produced Department of the Army statistics: in 1916, West Pointers outnumbered non-West Pointers by eight to one; by 1945, non-West Point men outnumbered Academy men by fifty to one. John, however, had made nearly every officer in the book a West Point man and had imbued these characters with a strong sense of superiority in both background and performance.

John also had made Melville Goodwin such a thoroughly Army-oriented man that Goodwin hardly ever appeared out of uniform. He wore a full-dress uniform to visit friends in the country and even to call on beautiful Dottie Peale. Joe Green pointed out that most officers eagerly get into civilian clothes as soon as duty hours are over, and that to behave otherwise made Goodwin look ridiculous. He suggested that John supply Goodwin with some decent civilian suits, cut by the same tailor who would have done Goodwin's uniforms—Brooks Brothers, Morry Luxemburg, or Wilner's in Washington. Joe Greene went on to point out what he felt were flaws in the development of John's characters. “The sexual attraction of Dottie and the (possible) lack of it in Muriel are never sharpened up,” he wrote. “In fact, I don't recall much expression or depiction of fondness between Muriel and Mel [a lack of fondness between John and Adelaide might be offered as a reason]. If such attraction didn't exist in Muriel for Mel, a forthright character of his type would very likely have been attracted by other women in the 1920s.” Greene found it “hard to keep a visualization of Dottie in mind”—a good point, for in this novel particularly John lets his people emerge more through what they say than by descriptions of how they look. And of
Muriel he wrote, “She is not direct and overt enough. She is too ‘special' in an Army sense that began to disappear 30 years and more ago.” The same thing he found true of Mel Goodwin, who “acts too much like a general of 1925.” But it was the “illogicalities of background” that he found to be the book's greatest shortcoming, and added, “I would hate to see such a good novel by a first-rate writer appear with unreal people and places in it.”

John Marquand, though he needed this sort of detailed criticism—with
Melville Goodwin
in particular—did not always react positively to it. Of Colonel Greene's long memorandum, six pages of tightly single-spaced notes, John told Stanley Salmen that he wasn't much worried by Colonel Greene's comments. John said that he figured he knew the Pentagon pretty well and that it pretty much existed as he said it did; he had been at Washington parties where three- and four-star generals mixed and had observed how, though they might be on a first-name basis, each was careful to pay attention to the other's rank. As for some of the Colonel's other points, those could be fixed without much difficulty. Because John wanted Mel Goodwin in uniform for those specific scenes, he would add a sentence or two explaining that Muriel had given away all Mel's suits while he was overseas; that he had several nice suits made for himself in Germany, but—in the rush of departure to the States—he had left these suits behind in his quarters in Frankfurt; these suits were being shipped but had not arrived yet. John would also make it clear that with a wife and two growing children Mel Goodwin had never been able to afford suits made up by fancy tailors. Thus, with the flick of his novelist's wrist, did John Marquand cover himself against any sartorial objections that might come from military readers.

As for Colonel Greene's character points, John had no comment. His characters, after all, were his personal property. He would sooner let a stranger look through his bank book than let anyone change a character. For Colonel Greene's trouble, a check went out for $250.

John may have occasionally been careless about detail—or at least stubborn about altering a detail he particularly liked—but he was meticulous about matters that affected his style or the rhythm of his prose. And when the first installments of
Melville Goodwin, U.S.A
.
appeared in
Ladies' Home Journal
, John looked them over carefully. Cuts—often quite deep ones—are always made in magazine serialization, but usually novels are pruned by omitting certain scenes or even certain characters from the story. In this case John noticed to his horror that his novel had been cut by having the “he saids” and “she saids” removed from the dialogue. He complained bitterly to Bruce Gould, saying that he had no objection to deep cutting in his manuscripts, even to the elimination of whole scenes or whole characters in order to make a story fit the available space, but that the snipping out of the “saids” ruined the rhythm of his dialogue and made his speech read “like bad Dumas.” In future installments would the “saids” please be restored? Bruce Gould apologized, and the “saids” reappeared.

John, in the meantime, was heading for a fracas with another magazine,
Holiday. Holiday
's editors, the late Ted Patrick and Harry Sions, had been making approaches to John for some time about John's writing an article for them. Their approaches had been tentative, and made through delicate feelers to the Brandt office, because John had gained the reputation of having an easily roused temper and a certain amount of artistic temperament. He had become known, in fact, as a writer who was often “crotchety,” and what
Holiday
wanted from John was a great deal—for which, due to a smaller budget than the mass-circulation magazines, they were prepared to pay rather little. They wanted a long, definitive article on the city of Boston, and they felt that no other author in America had made Boston his literary bailiwick more thoroughly than John P. Marquand. From John the
Holiday
editors wanted a piece of journalism that would evoke Boston's special flavor and the special cast of the Bostonian mind, an article that would make readers see, feel, and smell the mustiness of the tufted horsehair sofas in the Somerset Club, hear the sound of the click of teacups on Beacon Hill, the mousy beauty and the haughty pride of the old town. John would furthermore, as they say in show business, have two tough acts to follow.
Holiday
had already published two beautifully written pieces that had become, in a sense, American classics of journalism—William Faulkner's “Mississippi” and E. B. White's haunting evocation of New York City, written from his window on
the garden and the sturdy willow tree in Turtle Bay. John's would be a third of these great “place” pieces.

John, though he had pretty much given up writing short stories and articles for magazines, was flattered and intrigued by the idea, and after not too much coaxing from
Holiday
he agreed to write the article.
Holiday
gave him an extremely generous deadline, and after a few months of silence from John on the project, Carl Brandt was able to write Harry Sions, enclosing the manuscript, “Have no worry, pal, it's fine or so I think. And I'm not wish-fulfilling either!” Carl did, however, hedge somewhat by referring to the manuscript of the Boston article as a “first draft.” And John had told Carl privately that he had had some difficulty with the article, and some uncertainty about its structure. He had in the beginning used a different lead, then shuffled the pages about and placed the lead, instead, on page ten, adding a new lead to introduce the material that followed. In an uncharacteristically anxious tone, he told Carl that he hoped
Holiday
would like the piece.

Harry Sions, a man known in the publishing world as one not easily satisfied, read John Marquand's Boston and finished it with a sense of bitter disappointment. It seemed to him, frankly, dull, and yet one could not tell a writer of Marquand's stature that his work was dull—not in so many words. Something had to be done to salvage John Marquand's Boston, not only for
Holiday
's sake, Sions and Patrick agreed, but for the sake of John Marquand's reputation as a writer. Round one had begun.

Cautiously, Harry Sions wrote to Carl that he thought John's article had “the makings of a first-rate story—in fact, a great story, but it will need some fresh material and some changes, especially in the lead.” A few days later, he wrote in greater detail:

We feel that the lead is too slow, too topical and, frankly, too journalistic.… One suggestion might be to use the theme of the piece, indicated on page 10, as an idea for a lead—the line that begins with “Boston has been shaken by impacts that may well make strong men weep … but it is curious to discover that nothing of its personality has been basically altered yet. It still remains one of the few cities in America with an individuality and flavor entirely its own.” We think a lead along those lines would be more effective.… In addition, we would like some more intimate material, some more
feeling of Mr. Marquand's Boston than now appears in the piece. Perhaps one way of giving the reader this feeling would be to bring people into the piece, people whom Mr. Marquand knows and who would be able to talk about Boston in the language of Boston, the language which Mr. Marquand has been able to interpret with such superb skill. We hesitate to suggest specific types.…

John took the piece back—it was sent down to him at Treasure Island—with relatively little grumbling. He had, after all, agreed to revise “within reason.” And, within a very short space of time—barely a week, in fact—the Boston article was back on Carl's desk ready to be returned to the
Holiday
people, which Carl did with a note that said, “I think it's much better. Hope you do too.”

But Harry Sions did not think it much better. A little better, perhaps, but not much. It was strange; perhaps John was too close to his subject, perhaps too far away—the article had been written, after all, in the gentle breezes of the tropics, a long way from Beacon Hill. The tone of the article was oddly limp and flaccid, leisurely and almost disinterested; the author seemed to be yawning all the way through his subject. And the lead was hardly an exciting stimulus to read on: “Though a large city,” the article began, “Boston has many small-town attributes. Everyone seems to know a little about everyone else there, and all good Bostonians are partial to local gossip and anecdote.” When compared with the onrush of emotion with which E. B. White opened his New York piece, “On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy,” Marquand's opening sentences seem very bland.

John knew some wonderful Boston stories and could tell them at a dinner table at the drop of a hat—such as the tale of the proper Boston businessman who, after many long years of toil at the most uninteresting of desk jobs, was about to be retired and was asked by his company what he would like as a gift to compensate him for all his years of loyal service. He could conceivably have asked for a reasonably luxurious gift. The gentleman thought about this for several days and then said that he would like a raincoat. He was given a raincoat. And there was a story John told on himself of how, many years later, he had been asked back to a reunion of former
Boston Transcript
employees. A retired composing-room veteran
approached John and reminded him that thirty years earlier, when John had worked at the
Transcript
when just out of Harvard, John had talked of becoming a serious writer. “And what have you been up to since then, Johnny?” the old man asked with a friendly curiosity. John replied that he had been here and there and had also been doing some writing. The old printer clapped the Pulitzer Prize-winning author on the back and said, “Good for you, Johnny! Keep it up!”

But John had used none of this rich Boston material in his article. It greatly lacked personal material that would have brought it—and Boston—to life. From
Holiday
's standpoint, the article was a great disappointment, and yet to ask an author of Marquand's stature to rewrite
twice
was a thing few editors would dare do. Harry Sions, however, determined to push on undaunted. Writing to Carl, he said that he thought John's revisions had “improved it enormously,” but he asked for two things:

We are just a little concerned, in the first half of the piece, whether Mr. Marquand's viewing-with-alarm of the Irish and Italians and other encroaching influences is ironic or real … we do think it needs a little more qualification—perhaps a joke or an anecdote or some kind of qualifying paragraph that would avoid the impression that Mr. Marquand is sounding too much like a member of the Somerset Club talking about Curley and Dever.… The only other addition we'd like is some kind of reference, spelling out in more detail, the association between Harvard and Boston.