But I had no order, no discipline, no set goal. I was completely at the mercy of my impulses, my whims, my desires. My frenzy to live the life of the writer was so great that I overlooked the vast reservoir of material which had accumulated during the years leading up to this moment. I felt impelled to write about the immediate, about what was happening outside my very door. Something fresh, that’s what I was after. To do this was compulsive because, whether I was aware of it or not, the material which I had stored up had been chewed to a frazzle during the years of frustration, doubt and despair when everything I had to say was written out in my head. Add to this that I felt like a boxer or wrestler getting ready for the big event. I needed a work-out. These first efforts then, these fantasies and fantasias, these prose poems and rambling divagations of all sorts, were like a grand tuning up of the instrument. It satisfied my vanity (which was enormous) to set off Roman candles, pin-wheels, sputtering fire-crackers. The big cannon crackers I was reserving for the night of the Fourth of July. It was morning now, a long, lazy morning of a holiday that was to last forever. I had elected to occupy a choice seat in Paradise. It was definite and certain. I could therefore afford to take my time, could afford to dawdle away the glorious hours ahead of me during which I would still be part of the world and its senseless routine. Once I ascended to the heavenly seat I would join the chorus of angels, the seraphic choir which never ceases to give forth hymns of joy.
If I had long been reading the face of the world with the eyes of a writer, I now read it anew with, even greater intensity. Nothing was too petty to escape my attention. If I went for a walk—and I was constantly seeking excuses to take a walk, to explore, as I put it—it was for the deliberate purpose of transforming myself into an enormous eye. Seeing the common, everyday things in this new light I was often transfixed. The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnified world in itself. Almost an unrecognizable world. The writer waits in ambush for these unique moments. He pounces on his little grain of nothingness like a beast of prey. It is the moment of full awakening, of union and absorption, and it can never be forced. Sometimes one makes the mistake or commits the sin, shall I say, of trying to fix the moment, trying to pin it down in words. It took me ages to understand why, after having made exhaustive efforts to induce these moments of exaltation and release, I should be so incapable of recording them. I never dreamed that it was an end in itself, that to experience a moment of pure bliss, of pure awareness, was the end all and be all.
Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life. Experience! More experience! I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum, and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete.
Like a finely trained athlete, I was easy and uneasy’ at the same time. Sure of the final outcome, but nervous, restless, impatient, fretful. And so, after I had set off a few fireworks, I began to think in terms of light artillery. I began to align my pieces, so to speak. First of all, I reasoned, to have any effect my voice must be heard. I would have to find some outlet for my work—in newspapers, magazines, almanacs or house organs. Somewhere, somehow. What was my range, what my firing power? Though I wasn’t one to bore my friends with private readings, now and then in moments of unbridled enthusiasm I was guilty of such misconduct. Rare as they were, these lapses, they had a tonic effect upon me. It was seldom, I noticed, that any of my friends grew intoxicated over my efforts.
This silent criticism which friends often give is, I believe, worth infinitely more than the belabored, hostile shafts of the paid critic. The fact that my friends failed to laugh uproariously at the right moment, the fact that they did not applaud vociferously when I terminated my readings, conveyed more than a torrent of words. Sometimes, to be sure, I salved my pride by thinking of them as obtuse or too reserved. Not often, however. To Ulric’s appraisals I was particularly sensitive. It was foolish of me, perhaps, to give such keen attention to his comments, since our tastes (in literature) were widely different, but he was so very, very close to me, the one friend I had whom it was imperative to convince of my ability. He was not easy to please either, my Ulric. What he enjoyed most was the fireworks, that is to say, the unusual words, the striking references, the fine brocades, the senseless jeremiads. Often he would thank me, in parting, for the string of new words I had added to his vocabulary. Sometimes we would spend another evening, an entire evening, looking up these bizarre words in the dictionary. Some we never found—because I had made them up.
But to get back to the grand plan … Since I was convinced that I could write about anything under the sun, and excitingly, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to make up a list of themes which I thought of interest and submit them to editors of magazines in order that they might select what appealed to them. This entailed writing dozens and dozens of letters. Long, fatuous letters they were, too. It also meant keeping files, as well as observing the idiotic rules and regulations of a hundred and one editorial bodies. It involved altercations and disputes, fruitless errands to editorial offices, vexation, disgruntlement, rage, despair, ennui. And postage stamps! After weeks of turmoil and effervescence there might appear one day a letter from an editor saying that he would condescend to read my article if and if and if and but. Never daunted by the ifs and buts, I would regard such a letter as a bona fide pledge, a commission. Good! So I was at liberty, let us say, to write something about Coney Island in winter. If they liked it it would appear in print, my name would be signed to it, and I could show it to my friends, carry it about with me, put it under my pillow at night, read it surreptitiously, over and over, because the first time you see yourself in print you’re beside yourself, you’ve at last proved to the world that you really are a writer, and you must prove it to the world, at least once in your life, or you will go mad from believing it all by yourself.
And so to Coney Island on a wintry day. Alone, of course. It wouldn’t do to have one’s reflections and observations diverted by a trivial-minded friend. A new pad in my pocket and a sharp pencil.
It’s a long, dreary ride to Coney Island in midwinter. Only convalescents and invalids, or demented ones, seem to be trekking there. I feel as though I were slightly mad myself. Who wants to hear about a Coney Island which is all boarded up? I must have put this theme down in a moment of exaltation, believing that nothing could be more inspiring than a picture of desolation.
Desolate is hardly the word for it. As I walk along the boardwalk, the icy wind whistling through my breeches, everything closed tight, it dawns on me that I couldn’t possibly have chosen a more difficult subject to write about. There is absolutely nothing to take note of, unless it be the silence. I see it better through Ulric’s eyes than my own. An illustrator might have a good time of it here, what with the bleak, crazy, tumbling edifices, the snarling piles and planks, the still, empty Ferris wheel, the noiseless roller coasters, rusting under a feeble sun. Just to assure myself that I am on the job, I make a few notes about the crazy look of the razzle-dazzle, the yawning mouth of George C. Tilyou, and so forth … A hot frankfurter and a cup of steaming hot coffee would do me good, I think. I find a little booth open on a side street off the boardwalk. There is a shooting gallery open a few doors away. Not a customer in sight: the owner is shooting at the clay pigeons himself, for practise, no doubt. A drunken sailor comes lurching along;
