Go on, some one would pipe up, go on, give it to us! Blow your top! Here I would sit down, sullen, silent, apparently squelched. Come on now, don’t take it to heart, Henry. Here’s a fresh drink. Come on, get it off your chest! Knowing what they wanted of me, yet hoping that by some extraordinary effort I might alter their attitude, I would give in, melt, then deliver a veritable fusillade. The more desperate and sincere I grew the more they enjoyed themselves. Realizing that the game was up I would slide off into a burlesque performance. I’d say any bloody thing that came into my head, the more absurd and fantastic, the better. I’d insult them royally—but no one took offense. It was like fighting phantoms. Shadow-boxing again…
(I doubt, of course, that anything like this ever went on in the rue de Rome or the rue Ravignan.)
Following out the plan I had laid down for myself I was busier than the busiest executive in the industrial world. Some of the articles I had elected to write demanded considerable research work, which was never an ordeal for me because I loved going to the library and have them dig up books that were hard to find. How many wonderful days and nights I spent at the 42nd Street Library, seated at a long table, one among thousands, it seemed, in that main reading room. The tables themselves excited me. It was always my desire to own a table of extraordinary dimensions, a table so large that I could not only sleep on it but dance on it, even skate on it. (There was a writer, once, who worked at such a table, which he had placed in the center of a huge, barren room—my ideal as a work place. His name was Andreyev, and needless to add, he was one of my favorites.)
Yes, it gave one a good felling to be working amidst so many other industrious students in a room the size of a cathedral, under a lofty ceiling which was an imitation of heaven itself. One left the library slightly dazed, often with a holy feeling. It was always a shock to plunge into the crowd at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street; there was no connection between that busy thoroughfare and the peaceful world of books. Often, while waiting for the books to come up from the mysterious depths of the library, I would stroll along the outer aisles glancing at the titles of the amazing reference books which lined the walls. Thumbing those books was enough to set my mind racing for days. Sometimes I sat and meditated, wondering what question I could put to the genius which presided over the spirit of this vast institution that it could not answer. There was no subject under the sun, I suppose, which had not been written about and filed in those archives. My omnivorous appetite pulled me one way, my fear of becoming a book-worm the other way.
It was also enjoyable to make a trip to Long Island City, that most woe-begone hole, to see at first hand how chewing gum was manufactured. Here was a world of sheer lunacy—efficiency, it is usually called. In a room filled with a choking powder of sickenly sweet stench hundreds of moronic girls worked like butterflies packing the slabs of gum in wrappers; their nimble fingers, I was told, worked more accurately and skilfully than any machine yet invented. I went through the plant, a huge one, under an escort, each wing as it opened up to view presenting the aspect of another section of hell. It was only when I threw out a random query about the chicle, which is the base of chewing gum, that I stumbled on to the really interesting phase of my research. The chicleros, as they are called, the men who toil in the depths of the jungles ‘of Yucatan, are a fascinating breed of men. I spent weeks at the library reading about their customs and habits. I got so interested in them, indeed, that I almost forgot about chewing gum. And, of course, from a study of the chicleros I was drawn into the world of the Mayans, thence to those fascinating books about Atlantis and the lots continent of Mu, the canals which ran from one side of South America to another, the cities which were lifted a mile high when the Andes came into being, the sea traffic between Easter Island and the western slope of South America, the analogies and affinities between the Amerindian culture and the culture of the Near East, the mysteries of the Aztec alphabet, and so on and so forth until, by some strange detour I came upon Paul Gauguin in the center of the Polynesian archipelago and went home reeling with Noa Noa under my arm. And from the life and letters of Gauguin, which I had to read at once, to the life and letters of Vincent Van Gogh was but a step.
No doubt it is important to read the classics; it is perhaps even more important to first read the literature of one’s own time, which is enormous in itself. But more valuable than either of these, to a writer at least, is to read whatever comes to hand, to follow his nose, as it were. In the musty tomes of every great library there are buried articles by obscure or unknown individuals on subjects ostensibly of no importance, but saturated with data, ideas, fancies, moods, whims, portents of such a calibre that they can only be likened, in their effect, to rare drugs. The most exciting days often began with the search for the definition of a new word. One little word, which the ordinary reader is content to pass over unperturbed, may prove (for a writer) to be a veritable gold mine. From the dictionary I usually went to the encyclopaedia, not just one encyclopaedia but several; from the encyclopaedia, to all manner of reference books; from reference books to hand-books, and thence to a nine day debauch. A debauch of digging and ferreting, digging and ferreting. In addition to the reams of notes I made I copied out pages and pages of excerpts. Sometimes I simply tore out the pages I needed most. Between times I would make forays on the museums. The officials with whom I dealt never doubted for a moment that I was engaged in writing a book which would be a contribution to the subject.
I talked as if I knew vastly more than I cared to reveal. I would make casual, oblique references to books I had never read or hint of encounters with eminent authorities I had never met. It was nothing, in such moods, to give myself scholastic degrees which I had not even dreamed of acquiring. I spoke of distinguished leaders in such fields as anthropology, sociology, physics, astronomy, as though I had been intimately associated with them. When I saw that I was getting in too deep I had always the wit to excuse myself and pretend to go to the toilet, which was my word for exit. Once, deeply interested in genealogy, I thought it a good idea to take a job for a space in the genealogy division of the public library. It so happened that they were short a man in this division the day I called to make application for a job. They needed a man so badly that they put me to work immediately, which was more than I had bargained for. The application blank which I had left with the director of the library was a marvel of falsification. I wondered, as I listened to the poor devil who was breaking me in, how long it would take for them to get on to me. Meanwhile my superior was climbing ladders with me, pointing out this and that, bending over in dark corners to extract documents, files, and such like, calling in other employees to introduce me, explaining hurriedly as best he could (whilst messengers came and went as in a Shakespearean play) the most salient features of my supposed routine. Realizing in a short time that I was not in the least interested in all this jabberwocky, and thinking of Mona waiting for me to lunch with her, I suddenly interrupted him in the midst of a lengthy exposition of something or other to ask where the toilet was. He looked at me rather strangely, wondering, no doubt, why I hadn’t the decency to hear him out before running to the lavatory, but with the aid of a few grimaces and gestures, which conveyed most patently that I had been caught short, might do it right there on the floor or in the waste basket, I managed to get out of his clutches, grab my had and coat which fortunately were still lying on a chair near the door, and run as fast as I could out of the building…
The dominant passion was the acquisition of knowledge, skill, mastery of technique, inexhaustible experience, but like a sub-dominant chord there existed steadily in the back of my head vibration which meant order, beauty, simplification, enjoyment, appreciation. Reading Van Gogh’s letters I identify myself with him in the struggle to lead a simple life, a life in which art is all. How glowingly he writes about this dedication to art in his letters from Aries, a place I am destined to visit
