Author to Editor: Extracts From the Letters of a Young Writer

One of the few books I have read and re-read, perhaps to the point of utter self-destruction, is The Ginger Man. Tried to call Donleavy once in New York. Sitting at a bar called Googie’s just off Washington Square at 3d & Sullivan (oh come on, get on with it) and, yes, tried to call the man, wanted to say Hello there, loved your book, what’s new. No luck, probably good thing to keep the heroes at bay until I’ve made it big, then we’ll all have drinks and cashews on me at the Round Table. Wouldn’t want them all walking around saying I knew him when he wrote neurotic letters. I for Integrity.

Dreamed that someone poured a jug of DNA in the computer and it crapped out.

Once had a trigonometry teacher in high school, who confided in us that she could not so much as look at the walls and ceiling without being assaulted by theorems.

The entire peninsula of Florida is an algae-covered coral. Dead. Bleached-out houses and streets and everywhere the palms. Unkempt telephone poles. Rented a bicycle and toured the area, sniffing for a clue. Astonishing supermarket full of senior citizens who all look stoned out of their minds. Wigging out on the gherkins.

And on the walls are the Country Corn Flakes and Pepperidge Farm ads which feature old folks, intended of course for the young moderns. The ocean, too, looked as though it might gather its breath for one last piddling little wave and then crap out forever. Writing letters on the sand bars. Also zeros and ones. Dear God: 00010101111111001010010100011000001, Paul.

Met a mad person last night. An inkeeper, attempted to strike me in the face. The utter gall. I ducked. By then a hero stopped him. I said, “I feel it is necessary for me to explain to you that I am a lawyer.” From then on, free drinks. If only I could always be wearing the appropriate garb. Three piece suit, dark brown herringbone. Let them know you mean business.

Emphasis today is on pictures. Action, not words. Absolutely brutish. The Model 91 processes up to seventeen bizz-buzzes concurrently. If you had one, think of what you could do. For myself. I’d like to

get my novel on tape for easy updating. Feed in a few parameters. PARAM/LAFF-RIOT.

I’m thinking of coming up with my own theory of communication, as the prevalent ones (Shannon et al) are grossly insufficient. They attack communication as being source, sender, receiver, etc., which all seems to be a lot of garbage —communication just is; it doesn’t do anything. There isn’t any action to describe in such mechanistic terms as linkages, filters, etc. Maybe McLuhan has beat me to it. But he’s not talking about communication. He’s talking about Milton Berle.

I’m thinking of taking an acid trip Christmas day. Because of Huxley. Because it’s there.

Speaking of drivel, I went through my boxes of old stuff I’ve been typing since I was 20 or so and sorted it all out. Like looking at old fingernail clippings. Three unfinished novels, a musical comedy, tons of terrible short stories, and many many bad poems and fragments of even worse things. Those were the good old days, when I sent the New Yorker about two stories a week. I’m sorry, but this just isn’t for us. Wanted to crack it so bad I could taste it. Hemingway used to weep when he got his back.

I sent a copy of CATCHER IN THE RYE to the boy in Florida. ... I could barely start it myself, at age 17, but read it through amazed, scared, wondering — “Is this all there is to writing?” I thought I could’ve dashed it off in a week. Now I know better. It would take me a month.

Heloise and Abelard certainly had their difficulties. ... I think we can squarely place the blame for Hang-ups of Antiquity on the respective lovers all going steady too early. They should’ve played the field, and then, later on, when they were sure, they could’ve worked out something more realistic. Love and sorrow, sorrow and love — and what can be said for a love that is without pining, humiliation, and wrenchyou-inside-out-and-eat-the-emptyuniverse hopelessness? This, then, is what we hope future generations will solve. Both of them.

You have to be strong to have a nervous breakdown, and very serious. I’m neither. You have to talk yourself into it for weeks, perhaps months — I can’t stay with anything that long. Finally, you have to go ahead and do it — no more talking about it and just thinking you’re crazy, BE THERE,

I like to work. A tilesetter told me that one of the greatest pleasures in his job was, at the beginning of the day, seeing all the sand and mortar in a big pile, and seeing all the tile stacked up in a corner, and seeing all the tools laid out in front of him, and knowing that at the end of the day the tools would all be packed away in the truck and the rest would be in a new floor. Isn’t that magnificent? He said it right.

Do you like Frank Gallo’s sculpture? Woman in sling chair, for instance. I helped buff the legs of that one. I’m beginning to understand the industry I saw in him, working his ass off, not giving a shit what anybody else was doing. That’s the whole bag.

Seriously: during my last reading I was sure that the book was describing itself. I was flabbergasted. Does this happen?

There is a man named Albert who has a forty-pound greatcoat and an old hat and a beard and heavy glasses and an automatic shuffle, who walks up and down Main Street all day. He deplores the state of writing today. “I’d much rather read SNOW WHITE,” he says, glancing up at the traffic light. ... I promised him my next work would not be about crime, but would be about a hole growing in the City of Poughkeepsie. He seemed interested. Then we stopped at the Bargain Mart and I went in to get trenchmouth. Albert stayed outside, pressing his cloaca against the glass and moaning, moaning .. .

I took LSD twice, one small dose a week before Christmas and a huge dose Christmas day at noon. The first time was great — easy, relaxed, Relaxo. Christmas day was black, dead, even worse, I am reminded now of Kurz’ death in HEART OF DARKNESS because the horror was there as though it had been there all along. . . . Suddenly the secret was out. . . . Scared shitless, just couldn’t move or talk for an eternity which I knew would be an eternity. . . . No room at the Out.

Herby is a totally impotent psyche, numbed by the city and his own background, whatever it was. . . . It seems the tightrope I have to walk is somewhat circular, in that no matter how the externals of a situation change, Herby really doesn’t. . . . He really doesn’t believe the things he does have any effect on himself or his surroundings.

What are all these fractions doing on the keyboard. ⅛, ¼, hello there, and you too, @. Agh. There’s a cry of metaphysical despair. “@,” he screamed. “&!”

That one seems to be smiling, or trying to. Did you ever notice the little faces in numbers and letters? And the way different people make them. Sometimes a 5 can be sinister. This one is bland. “5,” he said, looking sharply at me through his so-what grin.

I sound like I’m scratching myself, yawning and thinking up new high-voltage insights. Saw a review the other day speaking of amperage. Wonder what Eliot Fremont-Smith or the other guy, the one who does the very short reviews, will say. Officially speaking, it’s no damn good. Lousy little book. Depressing. Takes the lid off the can of life. Pandora’s blocks. Reminiscent of some of Harold Robbins’ earlier stuff. Can’t imagine why some authors never read reviews. Maybe I will I can see, it might not be very important what a reviewer would say, but the curiosity would kill me. If I had the money I’d hire the reviewer to read his own review to me, soddenly, as I sat in my bay sipping something or other, nothing really sounds good, maybe hot tea.

How about another IN COLD BLOOD? Ronnie has a story for me about a friend of his who was murdered for no apparent reason. Wants to go 60-40 on the profits. He said after his friend was murdered (they were both 13) he didn’t give a_- - - about the world or anybody in it. Ronnie is delightful, actually of course does give a - - - - Every time he relays me something I “might be able to use sometime” his voice takes on a Shakespearean air and his head tilts back, as if the proscenium were advancing.

As you can tell I’m mustering around for another book, but can’t hold still. I suppose I’ll just start one sometime and write it fast and dirty and then try to see what I did, that’s what happened before.

Newburgh, N. Y. . . . a youth of nineteen or so sidles up to me: “Goin’ to the Armory for the driver thing?” I nod and say I don’t really know where it is. He’s taken the bus down from Kingston and wants to know if Poughkeepsie has any discotheques. Saddened by my reply. He worked in a warehouse and expects to be drafted. The sooner the better. Kingston is dead. The cops won’t let you stand around on the sidewalk. Partly raised in Newburgh, says there are “about a million niggers.” Millions like him in all the Kingstons, flipping away their cigarettes into the gutter and shifting their weight, spitting between their teeth to put up a show of getting older, refusing to take it seriously even though you know the credibility is creeping in, working in the warehouse and wondering who’ll be at the disco tonight, looking forward to the Army for some reassurance that there are plenty of guys who don’t give a damn . . .

. . . what you said in an earlier letter about SHOOT IT saying something different about causation as it really is. Causation is the chance outside of “outside,” the acknowledgment that systems are artificial and that man is a part of nature. What really flipped me about probability theory was its basic tenet . . . that a random card from a deck will just as likely be an ace as a deuce. . . . This way of thinking is so commonplace that the power in that statement slips by.

I remember my freshman year, looking at the catalog of courses, thousands of them, and wanting to know it all. Studied myself wan in a year and then pretty nearly gave it up. After nineteen years in school I am finally starting to enjoy reading. And strangely, hardly any of it fiction. Used to love reading science fiction, read one a day in high school. Murray Leinster. Theodore Sturgeon. Robert Heinlein. A. E. Van Vogt. Arthur the C. My heroes. Then no one until Donleavy, picked up THE G-MAN one sophomore afternoon because of the title and the cover. Fantastic. From there to Joyce. I could see the influence everyone had told me about but I liked Donleavy better. My literary history . . . Still rather impatient reading fiction. Want it to click right away, or at least get me interested. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is a great book as far as I’m concerned. Kept wanting it to go on, on.

My God, if I quit working and wrote every morning, I wonder how much would be any good. Of course I write just about every morning to you, but I’m flying in all directions. But on those Saturdays when I was writing SHOOT IT, the pages came at a fantastic clip, I never knew I had it in me. Not to say they were perfect or anywhere near it, just the idea of ideas coming in from nowhere onto those blank pages. Then reading them over and over, trying to figure out what I did. Using it next time. Great things are happening in me because of seeing something come out in that book.

Someone told me about the “response syndrome” coming from Mother, how we (editorially?) go for response simply because Mummy wanted it. I find it depressing, true or false. I want and need response and will forever — I am lovestarved, or, at the other extreme, afraid of closets.

I want to get high, get stoned, anything to forget about the god damned machine I’ve built or at least contracted around me. Money ... I can’t believe I’ll be dead in a few years, it’s completely beyond me. But would I be in such a hurry otherwise. I’m in a terrific hurry. Whether it’s wallpapering or writing . . . What was a bad trip may have been the best thing that ever happened to me, brought me down into the muck of people trying to screw each other, constantly going for the extra, the backbreaker . . .

I was with Penny, the girl in the poem, and it was ten at night. We were sitting on a blanket when I noticed about thirty yards away two figures idly shifting about. My instinct and my mouth both said Let’s get out of here. But I didn’t follow up on it, we started talking again. Then they are standing over us, two young spades about 16 years old, one has a stick about the size of a Louisville slugger poised neatly at full topswing, the other apparently is unarmed. Thank God no knife. “Got a dime” he says. I’m wondering what to do, try and elbow him in the nuts or what, since I’m down, when SOCKO I get the stars and stripes, and Penny screams and the other guy jumps on her and I’m wondering what in the good Christ is going on, socko socko again and I finally moved, got him by the leg and became a maniac for ten seconds. Penny got away, screaming. I’m yelling WHAT IN THE

- - - ARE YOU DOING and I

remember this kid’s face when he saw my head gushing, I think it was the first time he ever saw what he could do, saw it vividly. I catch up to Penny and she’s ready to jump in the water because she doesn’t recognize me. Then she does, then we start for the street, yelling our asses for the Fuzz, they were out busting kids for smoking pot, then they came, ten minutes at least. In the meantime, we run into a Puerto Rican gang, about five of them, and I’m really starting to flip, I mean I don’t know what I would’ve done besides bleed to death, but they were friendly after all and wanted to know where the guys were that did it, so I’m pointing and Penny’s telling them and off they go. Beautiful. I couldn’t have cared less about the ethics of revenge, I would’ve shot them dead if I’d had a gun.

I get the impression I am all kinds of different things to different people. Strong, weak, a madman, a tender gentleman, conceited, too hard on myself, too serious, too frivolous, psychotic, neurotic, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual. All I can conclude is that I’m here mostly for copy.

I lied to you about taking more acid, I haven’t had any and don’t want any, either. Just a lot of grass. Also a tranquilizer from time to time just to buff the marble. I’m extremely curious about a drug called dilantin they give to epileptics but someone has shown it has remarkable effects on non-eps as well. Something like eliminating excessive randomness, electrical discharges in the brain like sunspots. Zap! There went one. I’m in the process of sorting out old works, and am wildly alternating from hysteria to simple head-shaking and of course back again. . . . Today my soul brother is William James. . . . I’m not violent but I can bring down all the dark choppy skies.