The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe (18 page)

an ad-spot for mink coats.’
‘God. She’s quite fierce, isn’t she?’ said the girl. ‘Old Scaly
Bird.’
My head turned and I took two paces through the forest of
legs. Ted Solotaroff was talking to an intense young man with
hurt eyes. At first I thought it was Charlie, the leader of the
Monroe Six, this being the sort of party Charlie might steal
into as a young staffer at the Viking Press. He had the same
intensity and self-involvement as Charlie, similar interests,
but he was much smaller and didn’t find things funny. He
was talking about a story of Isaac Rosenfeld’s called ‘Red Wolf’. ‘In some ways I think it’s a real pity,’ the young fellow said. ‘He was never gonna be Saul Bellow. I mean, they were friends and everything. They both thought they were going
to be Bellow, but only Bellow has a shot at it.’
‘Even that isn’t guaranteed,’ said Solotaroff. ‘It’s all a
struggle. Have you read Saul’s Africa novel?’
‘Crazy stuff.’
‘You bet. Anyhow, that Rosenfeld story. Story’s narrated
by a dog, right? Well, that’s him doing Kafka. He can’t get
over Kafka.’
‘Oh, give us a break fellas,’ I said.
Following the perfume trail, I found Marilyn in the bedroom up against a white bookcase. She was standing with
Lionel Trilling and his wife Diana, while Irving Howe sat
looking up at them from the arm of some William Morris
upholstery. My owner had that lovely, strange, underwater
look on her face and she was listening intently. I stood in
the shadow-box of the doorway, when it occurred to me that
this was a play and with a certain taste in my mouth, a taste
of Hellman, I could see myself as the author. As Cicero said,
‘honour encourages the arts’.

* Lillian Hellman appeared before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities in 1950. She invented her life, which is reasonable, but she also invented a good line she claimed to have said under interrogation. ‘I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.’ No such line was uttered, except by Lillian at parties. Arthur Miller appeared before the Committee in 1957. Marilyn had accompanied him to the hearing in Washington.

trilling
is wearing an elegant sports jacket, a dark tie, holding a pipe at an angle to his thoughts.
diana
is wearing a midnightblue dress with a jacket over the top, a brooch pinned on her breast as if to guarantee her dignity. Her lips are stained grey, but I guess that’s just a dog seeing red.
mr howe
is wearing light trousers, a pair of soft shoes, and a cotton jacket with pencils sticking out of his top pocket. The room has a strong sense of the setting sun. The sound of Dizzy Gillespie comes from another room.
trilling [
careful, noble, unassailable
]: Let us call it the

romance of culture.
diana: No, Lionel.
trilling: No?
diana: I simply can’t believe we have enough reason to

begin thinking of art as a narcotic.
trilling: One might do better to insist on the notion
that no work of art can ever be divorced from its effect.
The Brothers Karamazov
is no kind of narcotic, but for the
sensitive reader it may nevertheless possess a homeopathic
character. Tragedy’s function is to prepare us, to inure
us, as human beings, as a society even, to what we may
experience as the pain of life.
diana: So art is simply an escape?
trilling [
patiently
]: No. An engagement.
mr howe [
cheerfully
]: The very opposite of escape. The
very opposite!
trilling: In comedy we find reality. We find the essence
of man as a living creature.
mr howe: Too true!
diana [
to
marilyn]: Mr Kazin believes that Dostoevsky is
the master critic of our civilisation.
mr howe [
very shyly
]: Is that so?
diana: Do you mean, is it the case? I would say it is arguable,
yes. Let’s see what Lionel says.
trilling [
looking at
marilyn]: In the essay of Freud’s you
mentioned a few minutes ago, ‘Dostoevsky and Parricide’,
Freud says that psychoanalysis can have no real purchase
on the artist. Yet he understands Dostoevsky to be a very
great writer indeed, and a high-culture prophet, who
could summon the forces at work not only in man but in civilisation itself. But you are interested in Grushenka, and I must say I believe that is where the author’s genius actually finds its bearings, in the blend of tragedy and comedy that informs his rendering of the secondary
characters in that powerful work.
marilyn: Do you think she’s funny?
trilling: Anything truly alive is funny.
marilyn: Really?
diana: Khrushchev is funny? Leopold and Loeb? Adolf . . . trilling: Khrushchev is not
unfunny
.
marilyn: He came to the studio. When was it, last year,
the year before? They had a dinner in the commissary at
Fox. I thought he was very funny. Kooky. I mean odd, but
I liked him. He once told Nixon all shopkeepers were
thieves. Nixon grew up in a shop, or something. trilling: There you have it.
[
As
diana
looks towards the window,
mr howe
fiddles with
the pencils in his top pocket.
diana
sips her martini. She
looks as if she’s biting the insides of her cheeks.
]
mr howe: Yes. Dostoevsky and Dickens are writers who
show us the comedy of realism, the tragedy of intellectual
life, the wonders of psychology. Each of them is a prophet
and his religion is humanity.
diana [
smiling
]: Very good, Irving. Very good indeed. mr howe: The work is full of buffoonery.
marilyn [
almost hurt
]: But I’m sure
The Brothers Karamazov
is very serious.
mr howe: It is serious.
trilling: There’s nothing so serious as comedy. diana: Go on, Irving.
mr howe: The novel is political to the marrow of its bones. In the world of Dostoevsky, no one is spared, but there is a supreme consolation: no one is excluded. Like Dickens, he populates his books with true people. Dickens sets in motion a line of episodes: the
pícaro
is defined by his energy and his voice, and he moves from adventure to adventure, each cluster of incidents bringing him into relation with a new set of characters. Via Fielding, the great influence on Dickens was the picaresque. A novel must not only reveal the world but it must be a world. Show me a good novel and I will show you a centre of vibrancy. Why, this dog could write a novel and I would read it tomorrow. It would no doubt be a piratical compilation from the works of old Spanish masters. Old British masters. So be it. Let’s have it. We need more of this. Where are today’s comic novels? It is the heartbeat of the form. That’s how society might be examined and our examinations, God save us, might
even prove to be entertaining. That’s my argument. diana: Well, it’s not much of an argument.
marilyn: I think it’s neat.
diana: Neat?
marilyn: Sure. I think it’s neat.
diana: You have lost me, Irving. Are you suggesting that
it might benefit our . . . our national literature, if works
were to be conceived by workers and servants, and by . . .
by dogs?’
mr howe:
The Brothers Karamazov
is really the story of
the domestic servants. All great stories are about the
servants.
trilling: That’s outrageous.
mr howe: I mean, even
King Lear
– it’s the Fool’s story.
And
The Brothers K.
is Smerdyakov’s story.

[
I yapped with excitement and put myself into the play.
] diana: Oh, look. It’s the hero of the hour.

At least Irving Howe was agile and open in his absurdity. (Perhaps too open: I think he was standing too close to me, picking up my propaganda, the taste of my experience, my will to power.) Mr Trilling, on the other hand, was a puzzle of a much less benign sort. There was something sinister in Trilling’s immense composure. People appeared to be awed by his carefulness, his patient discrimination, his gentle unwillingness to say too much or to think too little before speaking. His manner concealed fear and so did his faith in culture: there was dirt and uncertainty out in the world. Mr Trilling knew it, and his project was to make his defences impregnable. Not even his wife could quicken his cool blood, though God knows she made a good effort. While appearing to share in her husband’s dignity, Diana in fact exerted a powerful drain on it, subtly challenging his sense of himself while wishing to appear its curator. (Not that women are obliged to protect their husband’s gifts, but Diana wanted to, and she wasn’t aware of the hostility it generated in her.) There was something wrong with Mrs Trilling that caused her to deny, when it came to other people, those qualities she knew she lacked herself: it was merely a survival ritual. She needed to feel superior in order to feel alive, that was all. Lionel, meanwhile, had made a fetish of his own moral percipience, his body a vehicle of serene motion, a machine that concealed its efforts and its exhaustions. He wasn’t to blame for anything except his need to be blameless. All these things became obvious as the Trillings inched around each other with their super-alert conversation, rewarding the bystanders with their attention while making it clear that their marriage was all the social intercourse they could ever wish for. In her own mind, everything Mrs Trilling knew about her husband gave her licence both to doubt him and to defend him, and she knew that he had only recently forgiven Mr Howe for an article the latter wrote in 1954, about the intellect and power. Some essential human conflict was crystallised in her marriage to Lionel, but she found she was almost happy, which her private self told her was quite sufficient. She looked down at her shoes: blue, with a heel, a prim little bow on the front. Mr Trilling, meanwhile, was thinking how well – relatively well, almost well – his wife was coping at the party, given Kazin’s unforgotten criticism of her psychoanalytical approach to D. H. Lawrence. Marilyn remarked to herself how very smart these people were and how decisive they seemed about everything. ‘I’m afraid we’ve rather been monopolising Miss Monroe,’ said Diana as Mr Kazin came into the room, leading a bright and portly Edmund Wilson, who was sniffing into a handkerchief and holding a glass of whisky.

‘As we speak, Lillian is telling Carson she knows nothing about the South,’ said Alfred. ‘She is saying Carson has never been to New Orleans.’

‘The
convergence
of the twain,’ said Wilson like a grand and busy bumble bee.
‘I don’t know if you’ve met Miss Monroe,’ said Diana, always polishing the silverware.
‘Hello, madam.’
Marilyn put out her hand. ‘Charmed, I’m sure.’ Wilson tapped his tummy and looked at Lionel. It was like the meeting in the forest between Mary and Elizabeth in
Mary Stuart
: each bowed almost imperceptibly and Wilson coughed. Schiller himself might have coughed at the throattickling buzz which Wilson felt passing through his body as he gulped his whisky and began to talk. As people often do around dogs, they used me as the excuse for a little small talk, and you could see instantly that neither man was built for small talk. ‘When Henry James was old and tired,’ Wilson said, ‘he could be seen moving down the High Street in Rye with his dog Maximilian trotting behind him.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Trilling said. ‘The dog that may embody the finer feelings. I believe Maximilian was the long-lived Tosca’s successor. Edel wrote that Maximilian appeared to have some of James’s authority.’ Lionel looked around as if it all came naturally. ‘Is Leon here?’
‘I don’t know,’ Wilson said. Then he paused. ‘How are the Groves?’
‘Of Academe? At the same time vexing and propitious. We are running a course.’
‘Great books?’
‘That’s right. We aim to rehearse the old lost belief in the virtue and power of rationality. We count on order, decorum, and good sense to see us through.’ Everyone chuckled except Marilyn.
‘And you will add Freud, just to keep in touch with human frailty?’
‘Naturally:
Civilisation and Its Discontents
.’
‘Lucky them. Lucky students. I see all the little gods will be present and correct.’
‘Yes, Edmund. We dare not expect, in the first term at any rate, to bring ourselves to Arnold’s “fullness of spiritual perfection”, but we will do our best with the small talents at our disposal.’ Wilson swayed. He looked quickly at Mr Kazin.
‘It won’t wash, Alfie!’ he said.
‘Edmund.’ The old man turned back to Professor Trilling and narrowed his eyes.
‘Is the course in any sense American?’
‘In every sense.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. In every sense American. It is the spirit that moves us, Edmund. We are Americans teaching young Americans how to read.’
Irving Howe shook his head.
‘No, Irving. They won’t be marching,’ said Trilling. Alfred Kazin shook his head. Trilling turned to him. ‘No, Alfie. They won’t be looking for something to get angry about. They will attempt to understand the place of moral authority in modern literature. They shall learn how to read and if they succeed at that then they will learn how to live their lives. We intend to look at Diderot.’
Wilson took another slug from his glass. ‘It’s not American, Lionel. It’s English. It’s French. It’s German. And it’s more English than anything.’ Mr Howe took a step back, behind the sofa, as if to distance himself from anything that sounded like patriotism.
As they proceeded to a gentle dispute – gentle on the surface, raging underneath – my ears twitched and I could hear all the voices at the party. The sound was that of old Europe boiled down to its modern sap, the sons and daughters of immigrants claiming America’s newness for themselves. Carson was Lula Carson Smith; Marilyn was Norma Jeane Baker; Mr Trilling was Lionel Mordecai, just as our old friend Lee Strasberg was Israel Strassberg. They were like children in the little garden of America, alert to something new in themselves and excited to be in an environment that might readily shape itself in accordance with their wishes, each of them investing all the while in a quantity of forgetting. Marilyn looked over her glass and felt they were all like the people in Arthur’s plays, only kinder, better suited to go places, with greater spirit. She was finally glad that part of her life was over. Yet she supposed she might always be on the lookout for what made couples work and what made couples fail. Tonight she had a fresh and simple thought: the couples who survive as couples tend not to get caught up in provoking each other with negative remarks. The truth of it was quite moving. I’ve seen some people, not far into their marriages, produce unhelpful statements, not to say hateful ones, indelible ones, on an industrial scale. Not the Trillings, though. Their quarrels were silent. Jamesian. They saved their hateful statements for other people, and even those would be wrapped in a doily made of the finest lace and scented with a vapour of good manners. But it didn’t always work. As usual, Diana was first to break.
‘France? England? That’s nice, coming from the author of
Axel’s Castle
. You know, Edmund. I think all that work you’ve been doing on American battles has gone to your head. Are you losing your mind? Or is it drink?’ This was Diana at her least controlled and Lionel sought to silence her with a single word and a bow of his head.
‘Diana,’ he said.
‘Look, Lionel,’ said Wilson. ‘I’m sure Mrs Trilling has an argument. She usually does. She’s not wrong, by the way. I’ve had enough whisky to refloat the Confederate vessels sunk at Gwynn’s Island.’ Wilson suddenly seemed unsteady on his feet and he stepped on my tail. I squeaked but nobody noticed. ‘Work, work,’ he added. ‘It kills the appetite for social display.’
‘C-come now, Edmund,’ said Kazin. (The old habits were beginning to show.) Wilson looked at him with jowly contempt and the pity he reserved for immigrants who set too much stock by American ideals and promises. There was a touch of old Brooklyn, of Brownsville, in Mr Kazin’s attitudes, Wilson thought, just as there was an element of City College in his determination always to be ready with the correct answer. Wilson drained the glass and the ice clinked his teeth. Professor Trilling had travelled back to himself, to the place where other people’s bad behaviour merely confirmed his own certainty about how he himself must behave. Nevertheless, he wondered if he had kept Mr Kazin out of Columbia for good reasons, or just because he thought one Jew was enough.
‘I’m not making myself understood,’ said Wilson. ‘I am a ghost sometimes to my own opinions. I merely meant to say how unfortunate I find it that British values enjoy such automatic genuflection.’
‘Perhaps at
la plage des intellectuels
, they are. Perhaps in Wellfleet,’ said Irving Howe. ‘There’s Stephen Spender over there. He’s constantly thinking of Englishmen who were truly great.’
‘Stephen, yes,’ said Wilson. ‘Like so many Englishmen, he doesn’t know where he is going but he always knows the quickest way to get there.’ Lionel looked at Diana and pointed to his watch. Marilyn was thinking she must have bored the people, but she felt a nice cool breeze coming from the window. ‘I’m afraid the British are the blind leaders of the blind,’ Wilson said with his eyes almost closed, ‘and quite despicable for that. All those second-rate painters, academics, with their high, thin voices. Despicable.’
Wilson leaned down at this point and placed his empty glass on the floor. He did it very slowly as the people around him were dispersing. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just a citizen of falsehood,’ I said. He ignored me as he heaved his weight onto his back foot and grappled with the glass. It wasn’t too late, I said to myself, there’s still time, and then I jigged forward and made an effort to bite the fingers of his trailing hand. ‘OWWW!’ he said, most eloquently, ‘the buggering hound is at me!’
‘Take that,’ I said. ‘The patriotic gore. I’ll show you, vile man! I’ll show you to undersnizzle my people.’
‘Ow, ow,’ he said. ‘The vicious cur.’ He was inspecting his pink sausage fingers. He went quiet and his eyes were closed again. ‘Ow. The ineluctable modality of the tactile,’ he said.
‘Maf! I don’t know what to say,’ said Marilyn, lifting me up and looking to her hosts. ‘He’s usually so, um, reliable and not at all like this.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ said Mrs Trilling at the door. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you. Your little dog has the most exquisite critical taste. We must find a place for him on the faculty.’