Novelists Read online

  He did not want to be in love—and with a married woman! He had not planned this; he had not asked for this. —Or had he? Mrs. Brewler had sensed a “sadness” behind his words; what could she have meant by that, if not a secret dissatisfaction, a hidden longing? She knew him better than he knew himself! He had never imagined that his books were autobiographical in any but the most superficial sense; but here was the counterproof. He went to his bookshelf and looked at the volumes he had so naively produced over the years. It was all there, unconsciously encoded in his books. He flung open Mrs. Dreazle to the celebrated Laura chapter and read at random: “For surely, thought Laura, Mr. Edmunds would not—would he—dare to presume …?” Good God! He snapped the book shut in amazement. He had never once given conscious thought to the expressiveness of punctuation, but that one sentence now struck him like a compact essay on the subject. Those dithering dashes, that pregnant ellipsis, the excruciating uncertainty of that question mark! He pulled down Jebediah Stokes, opened to the last chapter and read: “The hawthorns were in full bloom …”—and could read no more. At one time, he would have been hard-pressed to define “lyrical” prose, but now he could do better: he could point to a quintessential sample of the stuff! Finally he tore into The Layman and Lord Newbotham, where he found this: “Mr. Clarence, laboring under the misapprehension that his presence was still desired, crossed the room to the picture window.” Mr. Gawfler, unable at first to grasp the Brewlerian significance of this passage, caught himself reading it three times. Then he riffled back and forth till the eponymous hero appeared, and he stood flabbergasted by the portrait of this monster of subtlety: “Lord Newbotham thought it better, for the moment, to say nothing.”

  Mr. Gawfler, for a moment, felt naked before Mrs. Brewler’s clear and all-seeing gaze. She knew him inside and out; she knew every nook and cranny of his mind—and she loved it.

  Did Deirdre love his mind? He supposed that she supposed she did. But his mind, he now realized, was in his books. Did she love his books? It had been years, surely, since she had given him any definite indication that she admired his work. Good God! Perhaps she hated his mind! Perhaps their entire marriage was, intellectually, a sham!

  After five or six hours of further deliberation and five or six thousand false starts, Mr. Gawfler at last successfully hurled himself out the attic door and down the stairs, determined once and for all to wrench this matter into the open.

  At the sound of his portentous tread on the stairs, Mrs. Gawfler signaled as prearranged to the nurse, who was to find the maid, who was to tell the cook to warm up Mr. Gawfler’s supper. Mr. Gawfler, however, did not go to the dining room, but joined his wife in the library. He snapped his mouth open and shut a few times, then fell into a chair and began methodically rubbing his face and head, as if searching for something he had glued there for safekeeping. Mrs. Gawfler put away her writing things and gave him her attention; she sensed that he wanted to talk.

  “Confound it,” cried Mr. Gawfler at last. “What did you think of—” But at the last moment he balked, and named instead a colleague (or adversary) whose recent three-volume novel they had both read and which he had grudgingly enjoyed. Mrs. Gawfler replied vaguely and promptingly; but to her surprise, Mr. Gawfler did not take the bait. He wanted to know what she thought.

  Mrs. Gawfler sat fully upright. It had been several years since her husband had read his day’s work to her, but she remembered how trying it had been for them both. She genuinely liked his prose, but when she praised it he suspected her of humoring him. When she denied this, he questioned her objectivity. When she tried to oblige him by scraping up some helpful criticism, he accused her of caviling, and losing the forest in the trees. Unable to say the right thing, Mrs. Gawfler had resolved to say nothing; and soon Mr. Gawfler stopped soliciting her opinion.

  Now she sensed a trap. She had in fact liked Mr. Paulsen’s novel, had been entertained and moved by it, but she was afraid that praise of another man’s work might be construed by her husband in his present state (she was acutely aware that he had eaten nothing all day) as condemnation of his own. Pressed for comment, she said that she felt on the whole that it was rather unfortunate that the heroine had had to drown her baby at the end. By this she meant nothing more than that drowning one’s baby was a sad event, something to be avoided whenever possible. She was even congratulating herself for hitting upon so unobjectionable a view, when Mr. Gawfler objected, and objected vociferously.

  Mr. Gawfler, it must be remembered, was a novelist, and his approach to novels was that of a novelist. On the page, instead of people, some more, some less likeable, he saw characters, more or less believable; instead of stories, some more, some less engaging, he saw plots, more or less skillfully constructed. For him, all criticism and commentary referred to craftsmanship; he could understand no other possible attitude. But Mrs. Gawfler was essentially a reader; and while she was certainly capable of evaluating the artistry employed in the making of a fiction, this was not her usual method. Especially when a novel was good, she was content to take the people as people and the stories as a record of their lives.

  So, this is what happened: Mrs. Gawfler said that it was unfortunate that the heroine had drowned her baby. Mr. Gawfler took this to mean that it was unfortunate that the novelist had seen fit to make the heroine drown her baby; that, in other words, this act was not credible, or was in some way not artistically proper. He argued that the heroine could have done nothing else—by which he meant, of course, that the novelist would have been wrong to make her do anything else; he thought the finale was fitting, and indeed beautifully tragic. Mrs. Gawfler, however, interpreted these statements not in the aesthetic sense in which they were intended, but in the moral sense with which she had opened the discussion; so it seemed to her that her husband was not far from saying that drowning babies was in and of itself a beautiful and fitting thing to do. She begged to disagree. And so the argument waxed heated, neither of its participants guessing that they were speaking at cross purposes, and both of them becoming more dogmatic as their antagonist became more outrageous—till Mrs. Gawfler seemed to Mr. Gawfler to be saying that one must never so much as introduce a baby or even a lake into a work of fiction, and Mr. Gawfler seemed to Mrs. Gawfler to be saying that all babies everywhere must be drowned always.

  The contest was interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Gawfler’s meal, which Mrs. Gawfler begged him to eat. Unfortunately, Mr. Gawfler did not know his own body as well as his wife did. (He had once consulted the local physician about what he feared were ulcer pains, but were in fact tactfully diagnosed as hunger pangs.) Taking his wife’s appeal as a cowardly diversion or bribe, he swept the tray grandly to the floor and strode from the room, in dignified indignation. Back in the study, he nursed his newly shattered illusions till they grew into the conviction that his wife was a moron who hated his mind. This terrible truth gradually lodged itself physically in his abdomen, where a strange new feeling of aching emptiness began to consume him.

  It was several days before Mr. Gawfler acted on this revelation. In the meantime, he became kindly, patient, and valedictory towards his family. At times he quailed at the drastic step he was about to take, and could almost believe that it would be better to let life continue in its old dreary course. But then the image of Mrs. Brewler—or rather, the image of himself that she had evoked that night—strengthened his resolve. He weighed the facts gravely and objectively, denying himself the sentimental luxury of modesty. If he had responsibilities to his family, he had even greater responsibilities to his Genius. (Mrs. Brewler had spoken much of Genius, and much of him; the implication was clear.) A man was put on this earth for some purpose; his was to write great novels. But could one write great novels, or any novels at all, in such a stifling, loveless, poisonous atmosphere as this? One could not. He owed it to his work, and to his readers of tomorrow, to escape before his afflatus was snuffed out entirely. Besides, an artist had an obligatio
n to live, confound it!—to taste all that life had to offer. His art demanded that he love and be loved by Mrs. Brewler; let the consequences be hanged!

  He worked some of these thoughts, discreetly and poetically condensed, into the telegram that he finally sent Mrs. Brewler later that week.

  Thinking

  much

  our

  conversation

  forgot

  sign

  book

  deepest

  regrets

  hope

  sincerely

  rectify

  oversight

  may

  call

  Gawfler

  The response came in the form of a letter, effusive but brief, inviting him to call for lunch next Thursday. As per custom, this letter was opened, read, and replied to by Mrs. Gawfler, before being slid under her husband’s door with the rest of the mail; so that Mrs. Brewler was rather bemused to receive two very different responses from the novelist. One regretted that a visit would not be possible as he was deeply immersed in a new novel; the other declared that he would be delighted to come. Since neither letter claimed to be a correction to the other, and since both arrived by the same post, Mrs. Brewler deliberated anxiously for some time over the guest list—ultimately striking an elegant balance between those people most likely to be impressed by an unexpected literary guest and those least likely to be disappointed by the appearance of no unexpected guest whatsoever.

  The lunch proved to be not quite what the literary guest was expecting. To begin with, he was greeted at the door and divested of his inscribed novel by a short man with a driving manner and a head cocked to one side, as if he alone would succeed diagonally where all the timid, conventional world had failed vertically—and who turned out, in fact, to be Mr. Brewler. Something about the pointed brevity of Mrs. Brewler’s letter had led Mr. Gawfler to believe that his was to have been a private meeting.

  Having ascertained who, or anyway what, Mr. Gawfler was, Mr. Brewler took him around and thrust him upon the attention of assorted groups of his wife’s guests. “A novelist,” he said; then explained, “He writes novels.” This fact never failed to meet with respectful astonishment, rather as if Mr. Gawfler had been introduced as an armless philanthropist who volunteered Sundays at the parish soup kitchen. Mr. Gawfler looked anxiously around for Mrs. Brewler as his new admirers asked him sensitive, probing questions about his work. Was it very wonderful being a novelist? Did he write in the morning, afternoon, or evening? How many pages did a novel have to be? So very many as that? Was it very difficult to come up with new stories and characters all the time? Would he put them—this lunch—into one of his novels? Was it very painful for him to kill one of his characters? Did he know Mrs. Humphry Ward very well? Mr. Gawfler was just beginning to resent the impersonal tone of these questions when someone asked him if he had been very devastated by the notice his book had received in last Saturday’s Review.

  Now, Mr. Gawfler, having published fifteen novels, had long ago cultivated a simple yet robust defense against book critics. He dismissed them all as fools. I would like to be able to say that this policy was not so self-serving as it may seem, for indeed Mr. Gawfler also applied it to favorable reviews; but the fact is that he did not receive many favorable reviews, and such as he did receive seemed to him thin, vague, and poorly written (though no more thin, vague, and poorly written than the bad reviews, let it be said). If he was hard on his detractors he was also hard on his supporters—because, in both cases, he secretly felt that he deserved better.

  Mr. Gawfler implied something of this attitude in the frosty manner in which he confessed that he had not “bumped into” that particular review. Mr. Brewler (who owned part of a newspaper) was scandalized by this failure, as he saw it, of the national press to reach its intended audience; his head even shot upright for a moment. He resolved to rectify this minor collapse of civilization, and, tilting sideways with an intent air of peering right around to the dark backs of things, set out to find the elusive article. His determination was so manifest that conversation died and everyone stopped to watch, as they would have been compelled to stop and watch a man lift a house or wrestle a crocodile. He found his quarry on the sideboard; he ripped it from its hiding place, lifted it triumphantly over his head and shook it, as if to break its neck, and presented it to Mr. Gawfler.

  Mr. Gawfler read the review. When he had finished, he laughed, once, as a fencing instructor in full armor might say to his student, “touché.” But the fastidiousness with which he refolded the newspaper, making creases where none had existed, the new blankness that now entered his gaze, and the hollow joviality that entered his speech, betrayed something of his hurt—or would have, if Mrs. Brewler’s guests had not found in these symptoms confirmation of their conception of The Novelist as a sort of benign lunatic, an absent-minded mystic with little interest in the mundane world of phenomena, little social skill, and even less sense of proper attire. The only thing missing was a filthy beard. They found him charming. The lunch was a great success.

  Two hours later, Mr. Gawfler staggered out into the sunshine with a sick and heavy heart. “Those people!” he muttered. It was all he could muster for a time, so he repeated it. “Those … people!” He decided he did not like those people. They were not his kind of people at all. They were—oh, dash it!—they were fools!

  It had been a particularly bad review.

  He walked to the train station with the slovenly gait of a child reporting for punishment. A carful of goggled motorists passed him in the road, sending a single small cloud of dust directly into his face. He stood there, sneezing and shaking both fists, for more time than it would be seemly for us to observe him … Eventually his rage was distilled into thought: So that was what the world was coming to! A nightmare vision of the future appeared before him, of the earth weltering in a fog of dust and exhaust through which half-human holidaymakers, crazed with pleasure, blindly piloted expensive missiles …

  And the whole time, Mrs. Brewler had avoided him, maneuvering always to keep one of her guests between them, like a squirrel on the far side of a tree. He did not believe they had exchanged one word. And he had practically chucked his family over for her!

  Ah, God, he was a fool. He did not deserve love, to love or to be loved. He did not deserve to experience things, did not deserve to taste even the most blighted of fruits from the Tree of Life. He was a scoundrel, a blackguard, a wastrel. He did not deserve to return home to his too loving wife, his too sweet children, his too comfortable chair, his too able cook, his too deferential page boy, his too industrious gardener … His mind rambled through his house and grounds with a heavy, sensuous self-pity, as if he were already a ghost there, who could look but never again touch.

  That night Mr. Gawfler joined his family at the supper table. He sighed a great deal and ate whatever was put near him, but with an air of ponderous obedience, chewing long and swallowing each time with a shudder of revulsion. At one point David spilled a glass of milk on his father’s sleeve, and there was a moment of exquisite tension; but Mr. Gawfler did not even look up, and merely muttered that it was no worse than he deserved.

  Mrs. Gawfler was concerned. She had witnessed her husband’s hopeful (if oddly clandestine) departure that morning and his lugubrious return that afternoon, and had concluded that the day’s walk in the woods, where he sometimes did his thinking, had resulted in a setback. In the past, whenever he had decided that an idea for a novel had to be abandoned or radically reworked, there had followed a week or two of just this sort of dejection. She made a decision.

&n
bsp; “Wait here,” she said unnecessarily. “I’ve something to show you.”

  She returned with Sunday’s Spectator, which she placed on the table beneath his dead gaze. Gradually, by fits and starts, the words on the page began to prick his awareness like so many pins and needles in a limb to which the feeling slowly returns.

  He read the review. When he had finished, he laughed, once, as a bridegroom might say to his best man’s toast, “Enough!” The elaborate nonchalance with which he refolded the newspaper, making creases where no newspaper had ever had them, betrayed something of his emotion. Soon he was on his feet and pacing around the table and tousling his children’s hair.

  “Dash my buttons!” he said at last. “That fool! That—fool! Where do you suppose he gets off? I mean really! It would make a cat laugh! Comparing me to Turgenev! I ask you!”

  After a time his exclamations faded into bewildered chuckles. The nurse took the children upstairs for their bath and Mr. and Mrs. Gawfler retired to the library, where the page boy had already built up the fire. Mr. Gawfler placed himself in his chair and stretched himself to the full extent of his considerable length, running his hands over the arm-rests as if searching for imperfections.

  “Of course it’s all balderdash,” he said gleefully. “Most critics after all are only failed novelists themselves, and trash is as often overpraised in its day as great works are derided and misunderstood and neglected in theirs. No, you can’t put any stock in the judgement of critics. It’s practically your duty to ignore them. After all, you don’t want anyone else writing your books for you. Ultimately, you’re the only one who can know if you’re any good or not—”