Sexus (19 page)

A little more happiness, I thought to myself as I listened to him, and he'd become what is called a dangerous man. Dangerous, because to be permanently happy would be to set the world on fire. To make the world laugh is one thing; to make it happy is quite another. Nobody has ever succeeded in doing it. The great figures, those who have influenced the world for good or evil, have always been tragic figures. Even St. Francis of Assisi was a tormented being. And the Buddha, with his obsession to eliminate suffering, well, he was not precisely a happy man. He was beyond that, if you like: he was serene, and when he died, so it is related, his whole body glowed as if the very marrow were afire.

And yet, as an experiment, as a preliminary (if you like) to that more wondrous state to which the holy men attain, it seems to me that it would be worth the attempt to make the whole world happy. I know that the very word (“happiness”) has come to have an odious ring, in America particularly; it sounds witless and shitless; it has an empty ring; it is the ideal of the weak and the infirm. It is a word borrowed from the Anglo-Saxons, and distorted by us into something altogether senseless. One is ashamed to use it seriously. But there is no good reason why it should be thus. Happiness is as legitimate as sorrow, and everybody, except those emancipated souls who in their wisdom have found something better, or bigger, desires to be happy and would, if he could (if he only knew how!), sacrifice everything to attain it.

I liked the young man's speech, inane as it might appear on close scrutiny. Everybody liked it. Everybody liked him and his wife. Everybody felt better, more communicative, more relaxed, more liberated. It was as if he had given us all a shot in the arm. People spoke to one another across the tables, or got up and shook hands, or clapped one another on the back. Yes, if you happened to be a very serious person, concerned
with the fate of the world, dedicated to some high purpose (such as improving the conditions of the working classes or lowering the rate of illiteracy among the native born), perhaps this little incident would have seemed to assumed a thoroughly exaggerated importance. An open, universal display of unfeigned happiness gives some people an uncomfortable feeling; there are some people who prefer to be happy privately, who consider a public demonstration of their joy immodest or slightly obscene. Or perhaps they are simply so locked up in themselves that they can't understand communion or communication. At any rate, there were no such tender souls among us; it was an average crowd made up of ordinary people, ordinary people who owned cars, that is to say. Some of them were downright rich and some were not so rich, but none of them were starving, none of them were epileptic, none of them were Mohammedan or Negroid or just plain white trash. They were ordinary, in the ordinary sense of the word. They were like millions of other American people, that is to say, without distinction, without airs, without any great purpose. Suddenly, when he had finished, they seemed to realize that they were all just like one another, no better, no worse, and throwing off the petty restraints which kept them segregated in little groups, they rose instinctively and began mingling with one another. Soon the drinks began to flow and they were singing, and then they began to dance, and they danced differently than they would have before; some got up and danced who hadn't shaken a leg for years, some danced with their own wives; some danced alone, giddy, intoxicated with their own grace and freedom; some sang as they danced; some just beamed good-naturedly at everyone whose glance they happened to encounter.

It was astonishing what an effect a simple, open declaration of joy could bring about. His words were nothing in themselves, just plain ordinary words which anyone could summon at a moment's notice. MacGregor, always skeptical, always striving to detect the flaw, was of the opinion that he was really a very clever young fellow, perhaps a theatrical figure, and that he had been deliberately simple, deliberately naive in order to create an effect. Still, he couldn't deny that
the speech had put him in a good mood. He simply wanted to let us know that he wasn't being taken in so easily. It made him feel better, so he pretended, to know that he hadn't been duped, even if he had enjoyed the performance thoroughly.

I felt sorry for him if what he said was true. Nobody can feel better than the man who is completely taken in. To be intelligent may be a boon, but to be completely trusting, gullible to the point of idiocy, to surrender without reservation, is one of the supreme joys of life.

Well, we all felt so good that we decided to go back to town and not stay overnight as we had planned. We sang at the top of our lungs all the way in. Even Tess sang, off key it's true, but lustily and without restraint. MacGregor had never heard her sing before; she had always been like a reindeer, as far as the vocal apparatus was concerned. Her speech was limited, restricted to coarse grunts, punctuated by groans of approval or disapproval. I had the queer presentiment that, in the throes of this extraordinary expansiveness, she might take it into her head to burst out singing (later on) instead of making the usual request for a glass of water or an apple or a ham sandwich. I could visualize the expression on MacGregor's face, were she to absent-mindedly pull off a stunt like that. His look would register incredible amazement. (
“What next, b'Jesus?”),
but at the same time it would suggest—“Go on, keep it up, try a falsetto for a change!” He liked people to do unheard-of things. He liked to be able to think that there were certain vile, almost incredible things people could do that he had never imagined. He liked to think that there was nothing too vile, too scabrous, too ignominious for the human being to perpetrate on or against his fellow man. He boasted of having an open mind, a mind receptive to any alleged form of stupidity, cruelty, treachery or perversity. He went on the assumption that everyone was at heart a mean, callous, selfish, bastardly son of a bitch, a fact which was proven by the miraculously limited number of cases which came to public attention through the law courts. If everyone could be spied on, trailed, hounded, cross-examined, nailed down, forced to confess, why in his honest opinion, we would all be in jail. And the most notorious
offenders, to take his word for it, were the judges, the ministers of state, the public wardens, the members of the clergy, the educators, the charitable workers. As for his own profession, he had met one or two in his life who were scrupulously honest, whose word could be depended on; the rest, which included practically the whole profession, were lower than the lowest criminals, the scum of the earth, the shittiest dregs of humanity that ever stood on two legs. No, he wasn't being taken in by any horse shit these birds handed out for general consumption. He didn't know why he was honest and truthful himself; it certainly didn't pay. He was just made that way, he guessed. Besides, he had other foibles, and here he would add up all the faults which he had, or admitted he had, or imagined he had, and a formidable list it made, so that when he had finished one was tempted to ask why he bothered to retain the other two virtues of truthfulness and honesty.

“So you're still thinking about her?”
he popped suddenly, turning his head slightly and twisting the words out of the corner of his mouth. “Well, I feel sorry for you. I suppose nothing will do but to marry her. You certainly are a glutton for punishment. And what will you live on—have you thought of that? You know you're not going to keep this job very much longer—they must be wise to you by this time. It's a wonder to me they didn't fire you long ago. It certainly is a record for you—how long is it now,
three years?
I can remember when three days was a long time. Of course if she's the right kind of girl you won't have to worry about keeping a job—
she'll keep you
. That would be ideal, wouldn't it? Then you could write those masterpieces you're always promising us. I think, by Jesus, that's why you're so eager to get rid of your wife: she's on to you, she keeps your nose to the grindstone. God, how it must gripe you to get up every morning and go to work! How do you do it, will you tell me? You used to be too damned lazy to get up for a meal. . . . Listen, Ulric, I've seen that bastard stay in bed for three days hand running. Nothing the matter with him—just couldn't bear the thought of facing the world. Lovesick, sometimes. Or just suicidal. That's something he used to like—to threaten us with suicide.” (He looked at me through the mirror.)
“You
forget those days, don't you?
Now he wants to live . . . I don't know why . . . nothing's changed . . . everything's just as lousy as ever. Now he talks of giving something to the world—a masterpiece, no less. He couldn't just give us an ordinary book
that would sell.
Oh no, not him! It's got to be unique, something unheard of. Well, I'm waiting. I don't say you won't do it, and I don't say you will. I'm just waiting. Meanwhile the rest of us have to go on making a living. We can't take a lifetime trying to turn out a masterpiece.” (He paused for breath.) “You know, sometimes I feel as though I'd like to turn out a book myself—just to prove to this guy that you don't have to make a monkey of yourself to do a trick like that. I think if I wanted to I could do a book in six months—on the side, without neglecting my practice. I don't say that it would be a prize winner. I never boasted of being an
artist
. What gets me about this bird is that he's so damned sure he's an artist. He's certain that he's infinitely superior to a Hergesheimer, let's say, or a Dreiser—and yet he hasn't a damned thing to show for it. He wants us to take it on faith. He gets ruffled if you ask him to show you something tangible like a manuscript. Can you picture me trying to impress a judge with the fact that I'm a capable lawyer without having even taken a degree? I know that you can't wave a diploma in front of someone's eyes to prove that you're a writer, but just the same you could wave a manuscript, couldn't you? He says he's written several books already—well then, where are they? Has anybody ever seen them?”

Here Ulric interrupted to put in a word for me. I was sitting back in my soft seat chuckling. I enjoyed these tirades of MacGregor's.

“Well, all right,” said MacGregor, “if you say you've seen a manuscript I'll take your word for it. He never shows me anything, the bastard. I suppose he hasn't any respect for my judgment. All I know is, to listen to him talk you'd think he was a genius. Mention any author—nobody suits him. Even Anatole France is no good. He must be aiming pretty high if he's going to make these birds take a back seat. To my way of thinking, a man like Joseph Conrad is not only an artist but a master. He thinks Conrad is overrated. Melville, he
tells me, is infinitely superior. And then, by Jesus, do you know what he admits to me one day?
That he never read Melville!
But that doesn't make any difference, he says. How are you going to reason with a guy like that? I haven't read Melville either, but I'm damned if I'll believe that he's better than Conrad—not till I've read him anyway.”

“Well,” said Ulric, “maybe he's not so crazy at that. Lots of people who've never seen a Giotto are fairly certain that he's better than Maxfield Parrish, for example.”

“That's different,” said MacGregor. “There's no question about the value of Giotto's work, nor of Conrad's either. Melville, from what I can gather, is pretty much of a dark horse. This generation may find him superior to Conrad, but then again he may fade out like a comet in a hundred or two hundred years. He was almost extinct when they rediscovered him recently.”

“And what makes you think that Conrad's fame won't fade in a hundred or two hundred years?” said Ulric.

“Because there's nothing dubious about it. It rests on solid achievement. He's
universally
liked, translated into dozens of languages already. The same is true of Jack London or O. Henry, decidedly inferior writers but decidedly lasting, if I know what I'm talking about. Quality isn't everything. Popularity is just as important as quality. As far as staying power goes, the writer who pleases the greatest number—assuming he has
some
quality and isn't just a hack—is certain of outlasting the higher, purer type of writer. Most everybody can read Conrad; not everybody can read Melville. And when you come to a unique case, such as Lewis Carroll, why I'll wager that, as far as English-speaking peoples go, he'll outlast Shakespeare. . . .”

He went on after a moment's reflection: “Now painting is a little different, to my way of thinking. It takes more to appreciate a good painting than to appreciate a good book. People seem to think that because they know how to read and write they can tell a good book from a bad one. Even writers, good writers, I mean, aren't in agreement about what is good and what is bad. Neither are painters about paintings, for that matter. And yet I have the notion that in general painters
are more in accord about the merits or lack of merits in the work of well-known painters than writers are with respect to writing. Only a half-assed painter would deny the value of Cezanne's work, for instance. But take the case of Dickens or of Henry James, and see what astounding differences of opinion there are among capable writers and critics as to their respective merits. If there were a writer today as bizarre in his realm as Picasso is in his you'd soon see what I'm driving at. Even if they don't like his work, most people who know anything about art agree that Picasso is a great genius. Now take Joyce, who's fairly eccentric as a writer, has he gained anything like the prestige of Picasso? Except for a scholarly few, except for the snobs who try to keep up with everything, his reputation, such as it is today, stands largely on the fact that he's a freak. His genius is admitted, I agree, but it's tainted, so to speak. Picasso commands respect, even if he isn't always understood. But Joyce is something of a butt; his fame increases precisely because he
can't
be generally understood. He's accepted as a freak, a phenomenon, like the Cardiff Giant. . . . And another thing, while I'm at it—no matter how daring the painter of genius may be, he's far more quickly assimilated than a writer of the same caliber. At the most, it takes thirty or forty years for a revolutionary painter to be accepted; it takes a writer centuries sometimes. To come back to Melville—what I meant was this: it took him sixty or seventy years, say, to make the grade. We don't know yet whether he'll stick it out; he may fall into the discard in another two or three generations. He's holding on by his teeth and only in spots, as it were. Conrad's dug in with toes and fingers; he's got roots already, everywhere; that's something you can't easily wave aside. As to whether he deserved it, that's another thing. I think if the truth were known, we'd find that lots of men were killed off or forgotten who deserved to be kept alive. It's hard to prove, I know, but I feel that there's some truth in what I say. You have only to look around you in everyday life to observe the same thing happening everywhere. I know myself, in my own field, dozens of men who deserve to be on the Supreme Court bench; they lost out, they're finished, but what does it prove? Does it
prove that they wouldn't have been better than the old fluffs whom we've got sitting on the bench now? There can only be one President of the United States elected every four years; does it mean that the man who happened to get elected (usually unfairly) is better than the ones who were defeated or than thousands of unknown men who never even dreamed of running for office? No, it seems to me that more often than not the ones who get the place of honor turn out to have been the least deserving. The deserving ones often take a back seat, either out of modesty or out of self-respect. Lincoln never wanted to become President of the United States; it was forced on him. He was practically railroaded in, by Christ. Fortunately he turned out to be the right man—but it could just as well have been otherwise. He wasn't chosen because he was the right man. Quite the contrary. Well shit, I'm getting off the track. I don't know what the hell started me off. . . .