Algernon, Charlie, and I Page 6

  When I've got six or seven books, I slide down the other side of the mountain and load the sack into my bicycle basket.

  At home most evenings, when schoolwork is done, instead of listening to the radio serials, I read, and read, and read. Many of the books are too advanced for me, but I know that someday I will understand them. Someday I will learn what they have to teach.

  The image of myself as a boy going up and then coming down Book Mountain is fixed in my memory as the icon of my love of reading and learning.

  It was clear to me as I wrote "Flowers for Algernon" where the shape of it came from. As Charlie's intelligence increases, I visualize him ascending a mountain. The higher he climbs, the farther he sees, until at the peak, he turns and sees all around him the world of knowledge—of good and evil.

  But then he must come down the other side.

  8. Silence of the Psychoanalysts

  MY PSYCHOANALYST'S LACK of any kind of response began to oppress me, and I found myself wondering about him. Like that Tests and Measurements advisor who avoided me after the inkblot test, this shrink never talked to me either!

  Without confiding in him, I quit selling encyclopedias from door to door and found a new job at Acme Advertising selling direct-mail advertising—mailers with attached return order envelopes. The company called us Account Executives, but it was still cold-calling—just one notch above ringing doorbells.

  When I told my analyst that I had violated his first commandment against making changes in my life, he said nothing.

  During my first executive meeting at Acme Advertising, I met Bergie, a tall, heavyset man who knew the good local restaurants and enjoyed talking about books. When he referred to the company as Acne instead of Acme, I knew I had found a friend.

  One day, he asked me to join him for a brown-bag lunch at the Peter Fland Photographic Studio between Broadway and Sixth Avenue—a block from the Forty-second Street Library. He and two Austrian friends, who worked at Fland's as retouchers of photographic negatives, had formed a chamber music trio, and they played in the studio after their lunch break.

  Fland was a jolly, bouncing photographer, with an Austrian accent, whose every comment conveyed good-natured irony. The luncheon concert was followed by a photo shoot, and he invited me to watch. Three tall fashion models came in and lounged about, waiting, looking bored, almost glum. The redhead sipped coffee out of a paper cup, the brunette chain-smoked cigarettes, the third, a blond, was filing her fingernails.

  A few minutes later, a short, dark-haired young woman entered the studio. Her boss was studying a still-wet 8 × 10 black-and-white print.

  "Ahh, Aurea!" he said. "You were right about the backlight!"

  Aurea rearranged the lighting, then slipped out of her shoes to step onto the set and called the models back. She styled the dresses, pulling the brunette's out to flare. When the blond's dress wouldn't stay put, Aurea took a spool of fine thread out of her pocket, pinned one thread to each side of the hem, pulled them out, and pinned the other ends of the threads to the floor. The redhead's dress was too tight, so Aurea slit it down the back, and arranged the front folds to drape naturally. Then she stepped aside.

  "Perfecd" Fland shouted. "Lights!"

  She threw the switches.

  The instant the set was illuminated by floodlights the models were transformed. Wet lips glistened, eyes opened wide. They came alive, exciting and alluring under the lights, as Fland took dozens of shots.

  "Okay!" he called out. "That's beautiful, ladies."

  The moment Aurea switched off the lights, the three models drooped like puppets whose strings had been released. They were bored again, glum, almost plain.

  I nodded. Few things were what they appeared to be.

  I stopped by the Fland Studio often, before my evening graduate psych courses at CCNY, trying to work up the nerve to invite Aurea out to dinner, or to the theater—for the full three acts, of course.

  One Friday afternoon, I got a call from a writer-acquaintance named Lester del Rey. He wanted to know if I was interested in a job as associate fiction editor for a chain of pulps. These were the popular fiction magazines of the day, printed on cheap, untrimmed stock that left paper dandruff all over your dark clothing.

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "Well, my agent, Scott Meredith, has heard of an opening at Stadium Publications. He's close to the editor, and Scott would like to have the job filled by someone who'd buy stories from Meredith clients. I told him that even though you haven't published yet, you've got a good story sense, and might be able to handle the job. It pays fifty dollars a week. Interested?"

  Thinking I'd be violating my analyst's First Commandment about not changing jobs a second time, I hesitated, but I said yes.

  "Okay, come down to Scott's office. By the time you get here, he'll have a letter of recommendation typed up, and he'll call ahead and set up a meeting between you and Bob Erisman."

  "How can Meredith recommend me? He's never met me."

  Lester paused. "Don't ask any questions. If you want the job, just get over here quick."

  By the time I arrived at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Lester had left, but fast-talking Meredith filled me in on the situation.

  "Bob Erisman works at his home in Connecticut, and comes into New York only on Fridays to pick up the edited stories. His associate fiction editor quit without notice, and he's desperate for a replacement."

  He handed me a note: "From the desk of SCOTT MEREDITH—September 1, 1950." It introduced me as an excellent candidate for the position. It said I'd worked at his literary agency for about six months on a temporary job, and had experience doing pulp reading for another periodical. They'd sold a few of my baseball, football, and science fiction stories.

  I swallowed hard. We'd never get away with this.

  His note praised me as a fast reader and typist, familiar with general magazine practice. The quoted salary, he wrote, was acceptable.

  When I said nothing, Meredith asked what I thought of the letter.

  I shrugged. "The last line is true."

  "Good," he said. "Then you'd better get over there before Bob leaves for the week."

  Martin Goodman Publications, and its pulp magazine subsidiary, Stadium Publications, were on the sixteenth floor of the Empire State Building. I got there at three o'clock, and Bob Erisman, the editor, was waiting for me.

  He got up from behind his desk to greet me, took the letter of recommendation, and nodded as he read it. "Good. Scott Meredith is a great judge of people. You start a two-week trial period on Monday."

  He led me to the adjoining office that held two desks. At the one near the window, a portly, old gentleman with horn-rimmed glasses halfway down his nose, was puffing away at a pipe clenched between his teeth.

  "This is the editor of our true crime and fact detective lines," Erisman said, introducing us. "Daniel Keyes is trying out for the associate fiction editor's job."

  The old gentleman peered at me over his glasses, saluted with his blue pencil, grunted his approval, and went back to editing through his pipe smoke.

  Erisman led me to a smaller desk against the other wall and pointed to different colored binders stacked on shelves. "Those are the agents' submissions. Dirk Wylie Agency, Lenninger Agency, Matson, and so forth. As you know, the gray ones are from Scott."

  I nodded, starting to sweat.

  He pointed to a garish red and yellow magazine cover on the wall. The May issue of Best Western highlighted a damsel in distress held hostage by a mean-faced, unshaven cowpoke, while the hero's white horse reared as a rifle shot exploded across the yellow background. The blurb read: "WHERE THE GUNHAWKS GATHER, A filed .45 was the kid's only friend in vengeance valley ... Smash feature-length novel." Near the top, a banner heading read, 3 BRAND NEW NOVELS PLUS SHORT STORIES.

  Erisman said, "You'll go through the agents' manuscripts and select and edit the stories to go with the novels."

  I picked up the slender magazine
. "Three novels?"

  He shrugged. "They're really long stories, or short novelettes, but readers like to think they're getting their twenty-five cents' worth."

  "I don't select those?"

  "Novels are commissioned from our top writers in each field, and I edit them. I also write the blurbs, the titles, and describe the drawings for the artists. You buy and edit the short stories. We have nine monthly magazines. Four westerns, four sports, and one science fiction. Why don't you take a few of each and get a feeling for the kind of material our readers like."

  He looked at his watch. "I've got to catch my train. See you next Friday. Before you leave, drop in at the business office, and they'll put you on the payroll."

  After he was gone, I sat down at my new desk and tried out the swivel chair. The true crime editor was too deep in his work to notice me. I picked up copies of Complete Sports, Complete Westerns, Western Novels and Stories, and Marvel Science Fiction.

  "So long," I said to my office mate. "Nice meeting you. Have a good weekend."

  He waved his blue pencil at me without looking up.

  I glanced around the offices on my way out. I was actually going to be paid a regular weekly salary of fifty dollars to read, buy, and edit stories. I had landed on the first step of a career that would support me while I wrote fiction. Then I was through the door, down the elevator, and out onto Fifth Avenue to catch the bus that would take me to my psychoanalysts office. I was apprehensive. I had violated the first of his Four Commandments twice in a matter of months.

  I got there a few minutes early, and as I waited I flipped through Complete Westerns. Almost immediately, I saw two typographical errors. That's when I realized that, despite Scott Meredith's recommendation attesting to my familiarity with general magazine practice, I didn't know the first thing about editing a manuscript.

  As I held the magazine, my hands trembled, and I started to sweat Something was coming into my mind. Something deep and frightening. The memory of my mother's hand ripping out my homework page. Her words, echoing..."It has to be perfect."

  When I finally got on the couch, I said, "I've got a new job. I'm quitting Acme Advertising. I'm going to edit a chain of pulp magazines."

  I expected him to say something like: Oh, you've quit another job? But he didn't respond.

  I said, "I must admit I feel guilty at breaking one of the rules you laid down—not once but twice—but I hate cold-call selling, and I'm excited about climbing the first rung up the literary ladder."

  After fifty minutes, filled with long periods of silence, I got off the couch, paid him, and left. As much as his lack of response irritated me, I realized his method was working. There in his consulting room, I had just associated my new editing job with the earlier inkblot memory of my mother's demand for writing perfection.

  Although I felt confident about finding and correcting mistakes, editing paragraphs and sentences, and fixing errors, I suddenly wondered, what about editorial notations and proofreaders' marks?

  Well, I thought, mumbling the cliché that has served me all my life, "Where there's a will there's a way." Instead of going to my room, I took a Fifth Avenue bus to the Forty-second Street Library to read up on editing and proofreading marks.

  No movies, or ball games, or working up the nerve to ask Aurea for a date—not for a while. Erisman would come into the office next Friday to pick up the stories. I had just one week to learn to be an editor.

  9. First Published Stories

  MY FIRST WEEK AT STADIUM PUBLICATIONS went well. I read through agents' submissions in each category, and out of loyalty and gratitude, I read those from Scott Meredith first. Unfortunately, his western and sports writers left me cold. I selected one from another agency, and then I glanced through the unsolicited manuscripts, sometimes called "over the transom," or the "slush pile," and chose one I liked.

  I found editing easier than I'd expected. I trimmed wordy sentences, toned down purple prose, removed redundancies, and deleted clichés.

  Erisman picked the stories up on Friday and said he'd let me know before the end of the following week if the job was mine. It was a long, agonizing weekend, but the following Tuesday, he phoned me from his home in Connecticut to tell me I was hired.

  The following week, I learned of a Manhattan apartment that was about to become available. It was next door to Lester del Rey, who had recommended me to Scott Meredith. The rent-controlled cold-water flat on West End Avenue and Sixty-sixth Street had been leased to Philip Klass, the brother of my Merchant Marine friend, Morton Klass. Phil, who wrote humorous science fiction under the pen name William Tenn, had just found a larger place. I rented the apartment.

  When I told my analyst that I had just violated his Second Commandment—"Thou shalt not move during therapy"—he made no comment. But a sigh of disapproval hung over the couch.

  "This was one deal I couldn't pass up," I said.

  Nothing.

  I reassured myself that he'd get over it. Although it was a Friday, I had a thick and chewy Monday Morning Crust.

  The apartment. What can I say about it? My rent, after a 15 percent increase, would be $17.25 per month. (That is not a typographical error.) The front door opened to a very long, dark corridor leading to a kitchen heated by a kerosene stove. To the left of the refrigerator, the bathtub was concealed by a hinged lid. Although a bathtub in the kitchen seemed odd, now I realized it made sense to bathe in the warmest room in the apartment.

  It also clarified something that had long baffled me.

  Thomas Wolfe, who had taught creative writing at NYU in the '30s, had later been described by his biographers as writing longhand, using the top of his refrigerator as a desk, and throwing page after page into his bathtub.

  I'd read that Wolfe had been a giant of a man, but I was confused by the picture of him tossing finished pages into the bathtub. I couldn't visualize the action. Did he run back and forth from kitchen to bathroom after each page?

  Now I understood. He must have lived in a flat like this, with the bathtub alongside the refrigerator. And I could visualize him writing furiously, flipping page after page into the tub, then scooping them out, packing and delivering them to Maxwell Perkins at Scribners, who would organize, edit, and shape them into Look Homeward, Angel

  Oh, for editors like that today.

  Oh, for apartments like that today! I still dream of it.

  Unlike Thomas Wolfe, I am far too short to use the top of the refrigerator as a desk, and, besides, in those days I used an old Royal typewriter. On cold days, I worked sitting down in the adjacent room, wearing a heavy sweater and a knit cap, using an overturned wooden crate as a typewriter table.

  I set aside my notes for a rewrite of my sea novel and began my first serious attempts to write short fiction for the magazines.

  The hour is late, and though I'm tired, I want to keep going, to get all this down. But Hemingway taught us in his posthumous memoir, A Moveable Feast, that it's necessary, after you achieved something and know what's going to happen next, to stop and put it out of your mind—which really means put it into your unconscious—and let it work. I've always suspected he learned that from Mark Twain who said it was necessary to leave the writing pump primed so it would start up easily when you began again the next day.

  I had developed another image for the difficulty of getting started writing after missing even a single day. It was like the Monday Morning Crust of psychoanalysis. Just as the mental scab over the psychic wound had to be broken before free association could flow again, so for the writer the creative wound crusted as well. To avoid risking writer's block, I write every morning, seven days a week, if I can.

  Any day I'm unable to write, because I'm traveling or attending to urgent matters, I feel miserable. But when I'm able to break through and pick up from where I left off the day before, the writing feels glorious.

  My first published short story appeared in one of my own western magazines, under a pseudonym that I will not reveal even
under threat of torture. Here's how it happened.

  A few months after I started work, the advertising department phoned. Some clients had pulled ads from the next issue of Western Stories, and I would need to fill the space with 3,000 words of fiction. I searched through the agents' folders. No 3,000-word westerns.

  I turned to the bundles of unsolicited manuscripts in the slush pile. Most of the stories were too long. The few that looked short didn't indicate a word count, and of course I didn't have time to count them. That's when I learned the importance of always including a word count in the upper right-hand corner of the first page, below the words "First Serial Rights Only."

  I swiveled in my chair. Since I couldn't find a story of the needed length, there was only one thing left for me to do. The magazine needed a story to fill the gap. It was an emergency. And, after all, I selected the stories. Why not write the story myself? Not for the money, mind you—at a penny a word, less an agent's 10 percent commission, it would come to twenty-four bucks—but to solve the space problem. And, besides, to see my words in print for the first time.

  Of course, I would have to use a pen name and submit the story through one of the regular agents. I phoned one and explained the situation. It was very common, he said, and agreed to represent me.

  That night, after dinner, I sat down to write. First, a western-sounding title. Remembering that one of my ships had loaded oil in the Texas gulf port of Aransas Pass, I typed: "BUSHWHACK AT ARANSAS PASS." Three thousand words would be a breeze.

  On Friday, Erisman brought back the previous week's stories, again complimented me on my judgment, and picked up the new batch. But the following week he said, "Another great lineup, Dan, except for that 3,000-word 'Aransas Pass' thing. What a terrible story! What awful writing! I can't imagine what possessed you to buy it."