The Captain Is Out to Lunch

3/16/92 12:53 AM

I have no idea what causes it. It's just there: a certain feeling for writers of the past. And my feelings aren't even accurate, they are just mine, almost entirely invented. I think of Sherwood Anderson, for instance, as a little fellow, slightly slump-shouldered. he was probably straight and tall. No matter. I see him my way. (I've never seen a photo of him.) Dostoevsky I see as a bearded fellow on the heavy side with dark green smoldering eyes. First he was too heavy, then too thin, the too heavy. Nonsense, surely, but I like my nonsense. I even see Dostoevsky as a fellow who lusted for little girls. Faulkner, I see in a rather dim light as a crank and fellow with bad breath. Gorky, I see as a sneak drunk. Tolstoy as a man who went into rages over nothing at all. I see Hemingway as a fellow who practiced ballet behind closed doors. I see Celine as a fellow who had problems sleeping. I see e.e. cumming as a great pool player. I couldn't go on and on.

Mainly I had these visions when I was a starving writer, half-mad, and unable to fit into society. I had very little food but had much time. Whoever the writers were, they were magic to me. They opened door differently. They needed a stiff drink upon awakening. Life was too god-damned much for them. Each day was like walking in wet concrete. I made them my heroes. I fed upon them. My ideas of them supported me in my nowhere. Thinking about them was much better than reading them. Like D. H. Lawrence. What a wicked little guy. He knew so much that it just kept him pissed-off all the time. Lovely, lovely. And Aldous Huxley… brain power to spare. He knew so much it gave him headaches.

I would stretch out on my starvation bed and think about these fellows.

Literature was so… Romantic. Yeah.

But the composers and painters were good too, alway going mad, suiciding, doing strange and obnoxious things. Suicide seemed such a good idea. I even tried it a few times myself, failed but came close, gave it some good tries. Now here I am almost 72 years old. My heroes are long past gone and I've had to live with others. Some of the new creators, some of the newly famous. They aren't the same to me. I look at them, listen to them and I think, is this all there is? I mean, they look comfortable… they bitch… but they look COMFORTABLE. There's no wildness. The only ones who seem wild are those who have failed as artists and believe that the failure is the fault of outside forces. And they create badly, horribly.

I have nobody to focus on anymore. I can't even focus on myself. I used to be in and out of jails, I used to break down doors, smash windows, drink 29 day a month. Now I sit in front of this computer with the radio on, listening to classical music. I'm not even drinking tonight. I am pacing myself. For what? Do I want to live to be 80, 90? I don't mind dying… but not this year, all right?

I don't know, it just was different back then. He writers seemed more like… writers. Things were done. The Black Sun Press. The Crosbys. And damned if once I didn't cross back into that age. Caresse Crosby published one of my stories in her Portfolio magazine along with Sartre, I think, and Henry Miller and I think, maybe, Camus. I don't have the mag now. People steal from me. They take my stuff when they drink with me. That's why more and more I am alone. Anyhow, somebody else must also miss the Roaring 20's and Gertrude Stein and Picasso… James Joyce, Lawrence and the gang.

To me it seems that we're not getting through like we used to. It's like we've used up the options, it's like we can't do it anymore.

I sit here, light a cigarette, listen to the music. My health is good and I hope that I am writing as well or better than ever. But everything else I read seems so… practiced… it's like a well-learned style. Maybe I've read too much, maybe I've read too long. Also, after decades and decades of writing (and I've written a boat load) when I read another writer I believe I can tell exactly when he's faking, the lies jump out, the slick polish grates… I can guess what he next line will be, the next paragraph… There's no flash, no dash, no change-taking. It's a job they've learned, like fixing a leaky faucet.

It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there.

In my mind I saw Gorky in a Russian flophouse asking for tobacco from the fellow next to him. I saw Robinson Jeffers talking to a horse. I saw Faulkner starting at the last drink in the bottle. Of course, of course, it was foolish. Young is foolish and old is the fool.

I've had to adjust. But for all of us, even now, the next line is always there and it may be the line that finally breaks through, finally says it. We can sleep on that during the slow nights and hope for the best.

We're probably as good now as those bastards back then were. And some of the young are thinking of me as I thought of them. I know, I get letters. I read them and throw them away. These are the towering Nineties. There's the next line. And the line after that. Until there are no more.

Yeah. One more cigarete. Then I think I'll take a bath and go to sleep.