Tag: Allen Kopp

Prentiss Peckinpaugh Prefers Pornography

Prentiss Peckinpaugh Prefers Pornography ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Miss Sullivan belched quietly into her handkerchief; the hamburger steak with onions she had for lunch didn’t quite agree with her. With the handkerchief over her mouth, she looked out over the thirty-two lost souls in her care until five minutes to the hour. They were all fifteen years old and most of them she would happily strangle if she could. She had been in the teaching profession for too long and was overdue for retirement.

Since it was Friday afternoon and everybody was waiting to be unleashed and unfettered until Monday morning, this group of ninth graders was engaged in what was called silent reading. Everybody must know that silent reading was serious business. You couldn’t write or giggle or daydream or think about what you were going to do when you got home or work on your algebra problems (it wasn’t study hall) or pass notes or whisper or gaze out the window or thumb through a magazine. You had to read a “good book,” preferably one from the reading list or one that Miss Sullivan herself had approved. You had to put the fifty-five minutes to good use, reading every word on every page, and absorbing what you read as if you would be tested on it.

Halfway through the hour, Miss Sullivan launched a surprise attack, suddenly standing up from her desk and walking the aisles between the desks, down one aisle and up another. If anybody was doing anything they weren’t supposed to be doing—reading a comic book or concealing a paperback of some kind behind a library book—she would catch them before they had a chance to hide it.

Prentiss Peckinpaugh was an odd boy from an odd family. He lived on a farm with his family; he had many brothers and sisters. His clothes always looked too big for him as if they had belonged to somebody else before he wore them. He always kept the top button of his shirt done up, even in warm weather. He walked with a cautious, forward tilt as if he had something wrong with his back.

Prentiss was sitting in the row of chairs against the wall. Miss Sullivan came upon him from behind, from the left, and her eyes fell upon the book he was reading, a paperback with a pink cover.

“What is that you’re reading?” she asked.

He closed the book so she could see the front cover. The title of the book was The Passionate Orphan.

“Where did you get that book?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“May I see it?” she asked.

He handed her the book and she flipped through the pages and read several passages, standing there in the aisle between desks.

“You’re reading this book?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Prentiss said.

“It’s ‘yes, ma’am’.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How far along are you in the book?”

“Almost to the end.”

“Do you know what this book is about?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What is it about, then? Would you care to tell me?”

By now everybody in class had their attention focused on the conversation between Miss Sullivan and Prentiss Peckinpaugh.

“I don’t think I can say it,” Prentiss said.

“Don’t you know this book is not appropriate reading material for ninth grade English?”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Who gave you this book?”

“Nobody gave it to me. It’s my book.”

“You don’t know where it came from?”

“No.”

“Did you steal it?”

“Why would I steal it when it already belonged to me?”

“Did a grown man give it to you? Maybe a friend of your father’s?”

“No. I already said nobody gave it to me. It’s my book.”

“Do you know the meaning of the word ‘pornography’?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s what this book is. It’s pornography and if somebody in this school gave it to you, we need to know who it was. This is a book that certainly doesn’t belong in a school, in a classroom, where other people can see it. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

“How about if we go downstairs and show the book to Mr. Ball?”

“I have the feeling I don’t have a choice.” Prentiss Peckinpaugh said.

“Right you are,” Miss Sullivan said.

Miss Sullivan put the class in charge of Mavis Blaylock, a know-it-all, holier-than-thou toady who would stop at nothing to gain favor with the teacher and would take down names of those who misbehaved. Mavis smirked with superiority and took her place at teacher’s desk.

After an admonition to the class to continue their silent reading, Miss Sullivan escorted Prentiss Peckinpaugh down the three flights to the principal’s office.

Principal Ball was engaged on the phone, so Miss Sullivan and Prentiss had to wait for about five minutes until he was free. When at last they were ushered into the carpeted, wood-paneled office, Mr. Ball took one look at them, frowned and said, “What’s this?”

“Well, we’ve been having silent reading this hour,” Miss Sullivan said, “and I found this boy reading this book.”

She handed the book to Mr. Ball.

“Just what is this?” he asked.

“Well, as I was just saying to him…”

“What’s your name, boy?” Mr. Ball asked.

“Prentiss Peckinpaugh.”

“Say ‘sir’ when you’re speaking to me.”

“Prentiss Peckinpaugh, sir!”

“I was just saying to Prentiss here that this book doesn’t belong in school and should never see the light of day,” Miss Sullivan said.

Mr. Ball laid the book on the desk and turned over several pages, reading as he went.

“Who gave you this book, Mr. Peckinpaugh?” Mr. Ball asked.

“Nobody gave it to me. It’s my book.”

“Where did it come from?”

“It didn’t come from anywhere. It’s my book.”

“Don’t you know that a book like this is not allowed in school?”

“I don’t see anything wrong with it. Nobody sees it but me.”

“Do you have other books of this nature?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

“No, sir.”

“Well, we’ll let you off with a warning this time because you’re young and you didn’t know, but I want you to know that if you ever bring pornographic material into this school again, we will take disciplinary action that will include a three-day suspension. Now, do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you’re on your own free time at home, you can read whatever you want, but in a school like this with hundreds of other students, you must follow our guidelines for what is acceptable and what is not. Am I getting through to you?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Take him to the library, to the fiction section, Miss Sullivan, and have him check out Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. That’s a good book and, more importantly, it’s an appropriate book.”

“I’ve read it,” Prentiss Peckinpaugh said.

“Well, read it again!”

“Are you going to give me back my book, sir, that you took from me?”

“No! I want to absorb it more thoroughly. I need to know what the students in this school are up to.”

The library’s one copy of Of Mice and Men was checked out, so Miss Sullivan suggested The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

“I’ve read it,” Prentiss Peckinpaugh said.

“Well, read it again! And after you’ve finished, I want a solid book report on it.”

“Okay.”

“That’s ‘yes, ma’am’.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

During study hall next hour, Prentiss Peckinpaugh went back to the library and checked out Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence. He wanted to choose for himself what books to read. He liked The Old Man and the Sea fine, but he didn’t want to read it again.

While reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, he could easily hide it behind The Old Man and the Sea and nobody would ever know the difference.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Ground My Bed, the Leaves My Blanket

The Ground My Bed, the Leaves My Blanket ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(I posted a different version of this story previously.)

The vast cemetery was many splendid acres of hills, trees, ponds, statues, winding roads, mausoleums, columbaria (for cremated remains), crypts, and walk-in burial chambers gouged out of the sides of the hills. For those inclined to notice, there was every shape, style (a century and a half of changing styles) and description of grave marker known to man, from no bigger than a shoebox to magnificent enough for a Roman emperor.

It was a sprawling city of some one-half million departed souls, but also home, on any night of the year, to dozens of indigents who didn’t have the price of a room or an acceptable flop and so found themselves with no other place to rest their weary (living) bones than among the unsuspecting dead.

Anybody who ever took up residence in the cemetery, if only for one night, knew it afforded many excellent and discreet hiding places where one might sleep, copulate, administer drugs, perform bodily functions, eat, bathe, think, drink, cry—or do any number of other things—away from the prying eyes of man.

As with every person in reduced circumstances who found himself or herself residing in the cemetery, Vicki-Vicki Novak had a story. After graduating from high school, she believed she had everything she needed to find herself a good job, so she left her rancorous mother and her unhappy home and spent six nausea-inducing hours on the bus and moved to the city. Life for her had always been hard, but it wasn’t until she came to the city that she discovered how cruel and unforgiving it is.

She would have taken any job she could find but the truth was there were no jobs of any kind to be had. She was turned away repeatedly because she had no experience of any kind. It didn’t matter that she was good at figures, was a stellar reader, and made better-than-average grades in school. She couldn’t get a job as a cafeteria worker because there were already seventy-five girls on the list ahead of her. She applied for a job in a laundry but was told she was too young and too slightly built to carry heavy loads. The sad truth was she didn’t make a good impression on those who might have hired her; she was too diffident and naïve; she knew too little of the world.

She spent her first two weeks in the city in an old hotel but, when she saw how fast her money was being used up, she took what little she had left and moved to a cheap boarding house where she slept in a tiny, box-like room and ate two small meals a day.

Finally even the boarding house was too expensive for her and she ended up living on the streets, where she met a coterie of other down-and-outers just like her. They gave her advice about how to survive and where she might get a bite to eat or a place to flop for the night. More than once she engaged in sexual congress with nefarious men in exchange for a small amount of cash, a package of cigarettes, an orange, or a couple of pills that were guaranteed to make her feel wonderful and forget all her troubles. She abhorred these couplings at first but after a time didn’t mind them so much because she disconnected herself from the proceedings and felt nothing.

Vicki-Vicki was fortunate in one respect because when she first began living on the streets of the city, it was May and the cruel and dreadful winter was past and wouldn’t be coming around again for a while. During a police crackdown on the street people, she sought refuge in the cemetery on the advice of a friend, one Chester Burnside, a man who might at one time have been a woman (one of those aberrations of nature all too abundant in the large city). The number-one piece of cemetery advice that veterans like Chester Burnside had to offer to newcomers like Vicki-Vicki was this: Don’t get caught because if you do you might get your brains knocked out or you might end up in jail. All the veterans had horror stories about people getting their brain matter literally knocked out of their heads onto the ground by leering, sadistic cemetery guards.

On a Friday afternoon in October, Vicki-Vicki was washing up at one of the cemetery’s fountains. She trailed her hands in the water and brought them to her face. The water was fresh and clean. She wished she might take off all her clothes and get down in the water naked and give herself a good scrubbing, but if she dared to do such a thing, somebody was sure to come along and see her, so she just contented herself with rinsing her arms and face.

Towering above the fountain was a seven-foot tall lady angel. Her wings were only marginally chipped and bird-splattered; she looked down with a benevolent and loving expression.

“What are you doing here?” the angel asked, bending her head in Vicki-Vicki’s direction.

“I was washing myself,” Vicki-Vicki said.

“You might drown yourself if you have any sense.”

“Why would I do that?”

“It’s October. Winter’s coming. Are you going to go home while you still can?”

“I don’t have a home.”

“Everybody has a home.”

“My mother said she’d kill me if she ever saw me again.”

“When did you last eat?”

“I don’t know. Yesterday, sometime, I think.”

“Life is hard, isn’t it?”

“My life is. I don’t know about anybody else’s.”

“You must do better.”

“Tell me how.”

Somebody was coming. They both heard the footsteps moving through the leaves at the same time. The angel went back to being mute and immobile, while Vicki-Vicki ran and hid behind the nearest large tree.

When she peered cautiously around the tree, she was relieved to see it was the old wino Eulah Knickerbocker and not a cemetery guard.

“Hey! You!” she said, stepping out into the open.

Eulah Knickerbocker jumped and only kept from screaming by placing her filthy hand over her mouth. “You shouldn’t scare people like that!” she said. “My nerves is shot all to hell!”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“I’m going around telling everybody I see. It’s lucky I found you. There’s going to be a purge tonight.”

“What’s a purge?”

“They’ve took on extra guards. They’re going to go through the cemetery and round up everybody who doesn’t belong. Some of us will end up dead.”

“Just hide,” Vicki-Vicki said. “That’s what I do.”

“No, dear! You won’t be able to hide from them this time. If you’re here, they’ll find you. You’d better get out before dark.”

“Where would I go?”

“How on earth should I know? Go back to the city.”

“But I came here to get away from the city!”

“I know! It’s terrible, ain’t it? But if they find you here tonight, it will go very bad for you. They might throw you in jail, and if they do you might never get out again.”

“They don’t scare me,” Vicki-Vicki said.

“Take it from somebody who’s been there, dearie. I’ve been living on the streets for seventeen years. I know how these things go.”

“You haven’t seen that fella they call Diego, have you?” Vicki-Vicki asked.

“If I did, I’d try to forget it.”

“He owes me money.”

“You’ll be lucky to get a nickel out of him, even if you do find him.”

“No, he’s been working, clearing brush. If I can catch him before he spends all his pay, I can get my money and have enough for a decent room for the night.”

“Say, you wouldn’t mind me coming along, would you, darling? Two can stay in a room for the same price as one.”

“Not this time, Eulah. I just need to be alone tonight.”

“Well, all right. I figure it don’t hurt to ask.”

“No, it don’t. Have you got anything to eat?”

“If I did I’d share it with you.”

“I know you would, Eulah.”

“Have you seen my twin sister, Beulah?”

“No, I don’t think I have.”

“She’s the great beauty of the family. Have I ever told you about her?”

“I believe so.”

“She’s coming to get me and take me home with her to live. I don’t know if it’ll be tonight but any day now.”

“I hope it all works out for you, Eulah.”

“It’s bound to, this time.”

The sun was going down and the air suddenly had the feel of late autumn. It would be about the time that normal people who live in houses would be sitting down to dinner. She needed to think about where she would spend the night in case she didn’t find Diego and get her money. The important thing was to find a snug little place out of the wind that hadn’t already been claimed by somebody else.

She went to the oldest part of the cemetery, the part she liked best and the part where she was mostly likely to see a ghost if there were any about. The trees were sheltering; the gravestones were large and close together. She began piling up dry leaves to make herself a bed in a secure little spot between stones when she heard someone coming. She started to hide but it was too late; she had already been spotted.

“Hey, there, little chicken!” a man’s voice said.

Right away she recognized the voice as that of Julius Orange. He was tall and rather handsome but his face and hands were crusted with dirt all the time as if he never washed them and one of his eyes was permanently half-closed.

“I thought you were one of the guards,” she said breathlessly.

“No, but I could have been. Have you heard the news about the raid tonight?”

“Eulah Knickerbocker told me.”

“You’d better get out while you can.”

“No, I’m going to stay,” Vicki-Vicki said. “I’m cold and I’m sick and I don’t feel like walking all the way back to the city tonight.”

“It’s your funeral.”

“I don’t think the guards will come all the way over here. They’re afraid of ghosts.”

“You’re cold, aren’t you?”

“I have ice water in my veins.”

“I know a way to warm you up.”

“You got a bottle of whiskey?”

“No, I don’t mean that,” he said. “I was wondering if you’re open for business. I got four dollars.”

“You’d spend your four dollars on me?”

“And a lot more.”

“Save your money. Tonight I’m not worth four cents.”

“Well, if you change your mind…”

“Say, you haven’t seen Diego around anywhere, have you?” she asked.

“Not that I remember.”

“He owes me money.”

“You can have my four dollars and catch yourself a bus back to town.”

“Thanks. That’s awfully sweet, but I’m just going to bed down here for the night and see how things go.”

“It’s your funeral,” he said, and then he was gone.

It was fully dark now. She kicked at the leaves and shivered in the rising wind. She looked up at the sky anxiously, hoping to forestall any rain, but the sky wasn’t telling any tales. She burrowed into the leaves like an animal and gathered the leaves around her like a warm comforter.

The smell of the leaves was earthy and good, an uncorrupted smell, untouched by human filth. She was completely hidden from view, she believed, but she could still breathe and could still see up into the trees as far as the darkness would allow. This is not so bad, she thought. If only life could be like this always.

She felt the cold rising from the ground. She shivered and her teeth chattered but soon she felt warmer and went to sleep. She dreamed she was in a big bed in a warm room in a snug house and those who cared for her were within the call of her voice and there was nothing to be afraid of.

She jerked awake to the sound of men’s voices. They were far away but coming closer. There might have been as many as ten of them and they might have been at a drunken party for all the fun they seemed to be having.

She lay still and breathed deeply. There were so many leaves on the ground and she was sure they wouldn’t bother looking through all of them. They would just make a quick sweep and, finding no one, move on. She would laugh later at how close they had been but still missed her.

She was right. They did move on, but one of the men had detached himself from the others and was searching through the leaves between the gravestones. She heard his slow, decisive steps and then felt a rush of cold air on her face as he scraped the leaves away that were covering her.

“Come out of there!” a deep voice said.

She gave a little yelp and covered her face with her hands but knew there was no use resisting.

“Leave me alone!” she whimpered. “I didn’t do anything!”

“You’re not supposed to be here!”

“I’m leaving. Please don’t hit me with your stick!”

“Nobody’s going to hit you. Get up and talk to me.”

She stood up. The man, towering over her, shone his flashlight in her face. She couldn’t get a good look at him, but she knew from his voice and his bearing that his face, if she could see it, would be beautiful beyond believing.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“Magic,” he said.

“Please don’t take me to jail.”

“It’s where you belong. Don’t you know you’re trespassing?”

“I’m going, I swear!”

“It’s dangerous for you to be here.”

“I know! I’ll leave right now.”

“People freeze to death out here all the time. Last winter we picked up thirty frozen dead bodies.”

“I was looking for someone, but he’s not here now so I’ll just go.”

“If I turn you over to the others, you’ll go to jail.”

“Please don’t do that!”

“I’ll let you go this time, but only one condition.”

“Anything!”

“Promise me you’ll get out and don’t come back. If I see you again, I’ll remember you and I’ll turn you in. You don’t want to end up in jail, do you?”

“No!”

“Go home. Don’t you have a home?”

“No.”

“Go to a shelter in town, then. There are people there who will help you.”

“I will. I promise.”

He handed her a small paper sack, which she took unquestioningly. Switching off his flashlight, he took off his coat and dropped it on the ground beside her. He gave her one last look and then he was gone.

“Wait a minute!” she said. “I was…”

She could still here his voice after he was gone. If I see you here again, I’ll remember you and you’ll go to jail.  

“Take me with you!” she called out, but he was already gone and couldn’t have heard.

She remembered the paper bag she held in her hand and opened it. Inside were a ham sandwich wrapped in paper and a little carton of milk.

She ate the sandwich and drank the milk as if tasting those things for the first time and when she was finished she vomited, bending over at the waist and leaning against a tree.

When she was finished, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and then as she was turning away from the tree she remembered the coat lying on the ground and picked it up and put it on. It was much too big for her, going almost to her knees, and it still held the warmth of the man’s body and traces of his man smell.

She hugged her arms to her body and, like a princess in a fairy story, was transformed. A celestial light appeared above her head and shone down on her, entering her brain and settling around her heart. She heard the sweetest music she had ever known, coming from a faraway place. She trembled all over and fell to the ground in a kind of religious ecstasy, having looked, at last, upon the face of the one and only God.

Two hours later, by which time she could no longer remember she was supposed to hide herself, she was taken into custody by a second wave of guards making their way through the cemetery. Nobody hit her with a stick or beat her, but she was taken to jail and locked up.

She spent the night sitting up in a filthy, stinking cell with about two dozen other women. In the morning at seven o’clock, she was given an egg sandwich and a cup of coffee and released. When she stepped out onto the sidewalk, the sun blinded her and she didn’t know where she was or where she was supposed to go.

A sympathetic soul, someone who knew the kind of person she was, gave her a ride back to the cemetery. She wept when she found herself back in the familiar place. It was like going home.

It was a much warmer day than the day before. The sun shone and the breeze was refreshing instead of chilling. After the night in jail, she wanted only to sleep.

She went to what she thought was the most secluded part of the cemetery and found an ideal sleeping spot under some bushes. It was like a little cave or animal’s lair. The ground was dry, covered with soft needles, and there was just enough sunlight filtering through the leaves to create a soporific warmth.

Knowing she would not be disturbed, she slept comfortably throughout the day. When she awoke, it was just turning dark. She pulled herself out of the bushes, trying to remember the last thing that happened to her. Oh, yes, there was Diego. She would find him and get the money he owed her. She would get herself a roast beef sandwich, a bottle of wine and a room for the night, and it would be just like heaven.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Day of the Locust ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Day of the Locust ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Nathanael West’s classic American novel, The Day of the Locust, was first published in 1939. It’s set in 1933 in Hollywood, California, and is about the seedy underside of Hollywood (no glamour and glitz here) and the “people who go to California to die.” Nearly everybody who lives in Hollywood has gone there from some other part of the country.

Tod Hackett works in a movie studio as an artist. We don’t get a clear notion of exactly what he does, but he seems to “conceptualize” movies on paper before they are made. Like a lot of other people in Hollywood, he hopes to be a big success. When he meets Faye Greener, he is taken with her, as a lot of other men are. Faye is only seventeen years old but old beyond her years. She calls herself a movie actress but has only ever appeared as an “extra.” She is more of a floozy than anything else and doesn’t mind working as a whore if it’s the only way she can get money.

Faye lives with and takes care of her father, Harry Greener. He is an alcoholic bum, a broken-down vaudevillian who makes furniture polish in his own home and then goes around selling it to unwitting customers. Times are hard. He remains a performer, though, and will do his vaudeville schtick when compelled to do so. Harry provides a lot of the comic relief in the novel.

Tod continues to pine for Faye, but he is a smart young man and sees that it is hopeless. She is just a superficial flake who will never be seriously true to anybody. When she meets a strange, older man named Homer Simpson, she latches on to him because he lives in his own house and encourages her in her hopeless acting career. After Harry dies, she moves in with Homer. Tod is jealous at first, but after he sees how Faye flits around from man to man indiscriminately, he seems to change his opinion and becomes ambivalent toward her.

And then there is Adore, the androgynous child actor who is a neighbor of Homer Simpson’s. Adore has a “stage mother” and is a rising child star in Hollywood. At the conclusion of the novel, Adore meets a tragic and violent end at the hands of Homer Simpson.

Nathanael West (1903-1940) had a spare writing style that might almost be called minimalist. He didn’t waste space or words. The Day of the Locust is a decidedly pessimistic view of Hollywood and the human race. The concluding scene in the novel takes place outside a Hollywood movie premiere, where an unruly mob demonstrates the worst of human nature. People are as mindless and swarming as a plague of locusts.

A memorable 1975 movie version of The Day of the Locust starred a 36-year-old Karen Black playing seventeen-year-old Faye Greener and Burgess Meredith playing her father.  Why is it never shown on television? I for one would love to see it again after these many years.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Never Mix, Never Worry (I Was Dancing and I Was Ridiculous)

Never Mix, Never Worry (I Was Dancing and I Was Ridiculous) ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(I posted a different version of this story previously.) 

They were out all night and didn’t get home until after dawn. Honey was sick from too much to drink and went right to bed. Nick slept on the couch in the living room, slept the morning away, and didn’t wake up until the middle of the afternoon. When he awoke, he had a terrible headache that he hadn’t been aware of while he slept. He wasn’t sure if his body was going to allow him to get up, but after a while he pulled himself to a standing position, head reeling, and went into the kitchen.

Honey was sitting at the table reading a book. She had a cup of tea beside her; she always said tea with lemon settled her stomach. When Nick came into the room, she didn’t look at him but concentrated on her book.

“Hello, Honey,” Nick said, going up behind her and affectionately putting his hands on her shoulders close to her neck. She flinched and leaned forward; he took his hands away as from a hot stove.

“What a night!” he said with a little laugh. “Whew! I feel like eating something but when I think about what I might eat I think I’m going to puke.”

She marked her place in the book, closed it, and laid it aside. “Want me to fix you scrambled eggs?” she asked.

Nick groaned. “I can’t stand the thought of eggs.” He went to the refrigerator and opened the door. “Don’t we have any bacon?”

“I haven’t been to the market yet. I was planning on going today but I don’t think I’m up to it.”

He poured himself a glass of orange juice and sat down at the table across from her. “Can somebody please tell me what happened last night?” he said.

“You haven’t asked me how I feel,” she said.

“How do you feel?”

“Lousy. I feel lousy.”

“Were you able to stop the vomiting?” he asked, pulling downward on his face with both hands as if trying to pull it into shape.

“Yes, a person can only vomit so much. I’ve stopped for now, but I don’t dare eat anything. I think it’s going to take several days for me to feel right again.”

“Do you want me to fix you some toast? Do we even have any bread?”

“No, if I eat anything, I’ll vomit again.”

“All right.”

“We need to talk about last night,” she said.

“Not now, Honey,” he said. “I don’t really feel like a serious discussion at the moment. And, really, I think it’s better if we don’t talk about last night at all. Don’t you agree?”

“Better for you, you mean,” she said.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said, standing up. “If you feel better later, we’ll go out and get some chicken or something.”

“Maybe I need to talk now!” she said in an insistent voice that made him stop in his tracks.

“Talk about what, Honey?”

“I humiliated myself last night.”

“You didn’t! You didn’t do anything the rest of us didn’t do.”

“I was dancing and I was ridiculous.”

“We were all dancing. It was all in good fun.”

“Then why do I feel so humiliated today?”

“You’re tired and you’re overly sensitive.”

“Don’t talk down to me!”

“I don’t mean to…”

“I’m humiliated. I drank bourbon and scotch. Not together, but one after the other.”

“That isn’t anything to be humiliated about. We were all drinking. It was a drinking party. We’re all grownups. Grownups get to drink as much as they want. That’s what it means to be a grownup.”

“Yes, but you know my one steadfast rule: Never mix, never worry. Well, I mixed and I’m paying the price.”

“Honey, nobody’s perfect,” he said. “We all have little lapses.”

“Stop treating me as if I were a child!”

“Why don’t you go back to bed? You can stay there all day and I’ll wait on you. How will that be? If there’s anything you’d like to have to eat, I’ll go and buy it.”

“The faculty party was bad enough, but after that was over we couldn’t just go home and go to bed and quit while we were ahead the way any two normal people would. No, we had to go to an after-party party.”

“Yeah, I admit it was a mistake,” he said. “I wish we had never gone.”

“Then why did we?”

“She’s the daughter of the president of the college and he’s a senior professor in the English department.”

“The history department.”

“It never hurts to cozy up to the entrenched people. They’ve both been around a long time. They’re part of the landscape. She’s daughter of the president of the college, for Christ’s sake!”

“You’re thinking of your career, of course.”

“Well, one does what one can to get ahead.”

“Just once I wish you would give the same consideration to me that you give your career.”

“Honey, that’s absurd,” he said. “There’s no comparison.”

“Well, I’m glad you admit it!”

“That isn’t what I meant!”

“A night like last night causes me to question my entire existence.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are we going to spend our lives hobnobbing with disgusting people just so you can get ahead in your career?”

“No!”

“Because I’m telling you, Nick, I don’t want to live that way.”

“It was just one party.”

“You can find out a lot from one party.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“If those people, that George and his wife Martha, are representative of the life in this college, then I don’t want any part of it. The way they tear each other apart is indecent. And when they’re finished attacking each other they go after whoever happens to be present at the moment. Just being in their presence makes you feel degraded.”

“You’ve been reading too many books.”

“Did you know he called me ‘angel boobs’?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I think I heard that,” he said.

“And ‘monkey nipples’.”

“He really called you ‘monkey nipples’? I didn’t hear that. When did he call you that?”

“When you were doing your provocative dance with that horrible woman.”

“He was making a joke! You ought to be able to take a joke! You’re not a child!”

“How can you stand by and do nothing when a strange man calls your wife filthy names?”

She began to cry. He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. “You take things too seriously, Honey.”

“How would you like it if he called you those names?”

“I think I might have punched him in the nose!”

“But it’s all right when it’s me?”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“I can never face those two again,” she said. “I vomited all over their bathroom. It was as if they saw me without my clothes.”

“You were just being human, Honey. It happens to the best of us.”

“How can we live here and you teach here when I feel so uncomfortable?”

“It’s just something you’re going to have to get over.”

“I don’t think I can. I want you to start looking for another position right away. If not today, then tomorrow.”

“But, Honey, we just got here! Do you know how hard it was for me to get this job?”

“I don’t care! If you have as much regard for me as you do for your career, we’ll leave right away!”

“Honey, that’s so unreasonable! You can’t be serious!”

“I have never been more serious in my life.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” he said. “We’re here and we’re going to stay.” He picked her book up off the table and threw it hard against the far wall, not because he was so angry but because he wanted to make a point.

“I can always leave on my own,” she said. “I don’t necessarily need you.”

“Fine. Go home to your mother. Tell her what a mistake it was to marry me.”

“I want to know what happened between you and that woman, that Martha, while I was passed out.”

“Nothing happened! What do you mean?”

“I’m not as stupid as you obviously think I am. I heard them talking about it afterwards.”

“Heard who talking?”

“George and Martha. They thought I was still passed out, but I was just lying there, fully awake, with my eyes closed. I heard the words stud and houseboy. They were talking about you! Were you a stud or were you a houseboy?”

“I didn’t hear any such thing, so I don’t know what you mean.”

“How are you going to face them again?”

“I don’t think I’ll see them again until the next faculty party and that probably won’t be for several months. Everything that happened last night will be forgotten by then.”

“Well, I can tell you right now I’m not going to any more faculty parties.”

“What do I say when people ask me where my wife is? She’s too squeamish for university life? She throws up a lot and can’t stand to be teased a little bit?”

“I don’t care what you tell people. It’s your career, not mine.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m going away tonight.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll think of something.”

She stood up from the table and went upstairs.

“I’m hungry,” he said to the empty chair where Honey had sat. “I’m going to see what I can find to eat.”

A little bit of humoring would bring Honey around. She would never leave him. She was too dependent on him. He’d finesse her, just the way he finessed everybody. He’d cajole her, buy her a new coat or a piece of jewelry and everything would be fine. She needed to get out more and meet more people. If she happened to meet a young fellow, a handsome athletic type, who wouldn’t mind romancing her, so much the better. Nick would encourage it. Casual infidelity was all part of the game. The sooner she realized it, the better off she’d be.

And as for Martha, she wasn’t half-bad. A little bit gone to seed, but obviously with a few good years left in her. If she really liked Nick—and he would give her every reason to like him—she could help him in ways he hadn’t yet imagined. Of all the pertinent wives he might plow to further his career, the daughter of the university president had to be the most pertinent. And what could he do for her? He could make her feel good, make her feel young again. Remind her, if she had been inclined to forget, what it’s like to be with a real man.

He started to make himself a sandwich but then stopped what he was doing and went to the phone and picked up the receiver. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Honey wasn’t in earshot and then he dialed Martha’s number, which he had committed to memory. He let it ring twelve times and was about to hang up when she answered.

“Hello,” she said.

“Martha?” he said.

“Yeah, who is this?”

“It’s Nick.”

“Nick? I don’t know any Nick.”

“Nick from last night?

“Oh, yeah! You woke me up, you bastard!”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you are! Tell that little slim-hipped wife of yours she vomited all over my downstairs bathroom last night. Nobody can stand to go in there today. I ought to make the little twit get her ass over here and get down on her hands and knees and clean it all up.”

“She’s not feeling very well today.”

“Got a hangover, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, what can I do for you, lover boy? It’s Sunday, you know.”

“Is your husband at home?”

“No, he’s at school. Even on Sunday the old bastard goes to the old salt mines, just to get away from little old me.”

“I was wondering if we might get together today. You know, just the two of us.”

“My goodness! You are an eager beaver, aren’t you?”

“I had a really nice time last night.”

“So did I, lover boy. What did you say your name is again?”

“Nick. The stud. Remember.”

“Sure, baby, I remember! Who could forget?”

“So what time can I come over?”

“Make it about an hour.”

“Perfect!”

“And when you get here, you can clean up the vomit in the downstairs bathroom.”

“What about my wife?”

“You can drop her down a well as far as I’m concerned.”

After he hung up the phone, he had the distinct impression that Honey had been listening in on the upstairs extension. He was sure she took down every word in her secretarial shorthand. She would use it in a court of law during the divorce proceeding.

He crept to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. Not a sound came from Honey’s bedroom. He went halfway up the stairs and stopped, as if afraid to go the rest of the way.

“Honey!” he called. “I just remembered some work I have to get done today in my office at school! I’m going to be gone for a couple of hours. When I come home, I’ll bring you a cheeseburger and a milkshake. How does that sound? Bye-bye!”

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Member of the Wedding ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Member of the Wedding ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

In Carson McCullers’ wonderful, adolescent-angst novel, The Member of the Wedding, Frances “Frankie” Addams is a feisty twelve-year-old girl living in a small Southern town. Too smart for her own good, she is just on the verge of her teen years. Her mother died when she was born, so she just has her father, a preoccupied watch repairman at a jewelry store in town. The time is the 1940s, during World War II, but Frankie has other things on her mind besides war. Her young-adult brother, Jarvis, is marrying a girl named Janice in Winter Hill, a town a hundred miles away. Frankie longs to escape from her dreary, small-town life. She believes that Janice and Jarvis will take her with them after they are married and they will be a threesome. Everybody who knows how the world really works knows that Frankie is about to be seriously disillusioned.

In the absence of a mother, Frankie has Bereniece Sadie Brown to take care of her. Bereniece is an oft-married black lady who has known her share of grief in the world. Her favorite husband, Ludie Maxwell Freeman, died of pneumonia on a winter night, and since then she has been trying, without much success, to find someone to take his place. Bereniece is always kind to Frankie and tries hard to understand her and help her with her loneliness and insecurity.

John Henry West, Frankie’s brightly inquisitive, six-year-old cousin, lives in the neighborhood but is always at Frankie’s house. He eats most of his meals there and spends the night with Frankie a lot in her room, an “enclosed sleeping porch” above the kitchen. Frankie may not want to admit it, but John Henry is her best friend. She tells him to “go home” when she’s had enough of him.

The world is a frightening place for Frankie and we can see that, at age twelve, she has a lot of growing up to do. She has a near-date with a soldier who believes she is older than she is and is forced to hit him in the head with a water pitcher in his hotel room to discourage his advances. When she goes by bus to the wedding of Janice and Jarvis in Winter Hill with her father, Bereniece, and John Henry, she discovers just how disappointing the world—and life in general—can be.

The Member of the Wedding is a delightful novel to read, so beautifully written, by one of the most talented American writers of the twentieth century. It is evocative not only of time (the 1940s) and place (the American South) but also of childhood. What adult hasn’t experienced the terrors of growing up in an uncertain, frightening world? One of my favorite novels out of the many thousands I’ve read.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Trial ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Trial ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Franz Kafka, one of the most celebrated writers of the twentieth century, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1883, and died of tuberculosis at the young age of forty in 1924. His famous novel, The Trial, was written in 1914 but not published until 1925, after his death.

The Trial is set in an unnamed city in an unnamed European country. The principal character is Josef K., age thirty. He lives in a boarding house and has an important job, that of chief loan officer, in a large bank. One morning, just as Josef K. is getting out of bed to go to the bank, some men show up at his boarding house and arrest him for a crime. What is the crime? We never know and Josef K. never knows either.

After his arrest, he optimistically believes that it (his arrest) will all just go away if he ignores it and does nothing, but soon he is drawn into an inexplicable and nightmarish world of court procedures that go nowhere, nonsensical meetings with a bedridden lawyer, flirtation with the lawyer’s servant, paranoia, fear, a meeting in a dark cathedral on a rainy day (the person he goes there to meet never shows up, but he has a strange encounter with a priest), flirtation with a woman in his boarding house, speculation and worry about what is going to happen to him and to his position at the bank. (His trial is taking up so much of his time and energy that he hardly has enough energy anymore to do his job.)

So here we have a person, Josef K., with a pleasant life and a successful career whose world is shattered in a flash. Isn’t this the kind of thing that could happen to anybody anywhere? Isn’t it the stuff of nightmares?

The Trial is a less-than-perfect exploration in weirdness, but well worth reading. It contains long, long paragraphs (in some cases going on for pages), but the sentences are not long and tortured, as you might expect, so it is mostly easy to read. The long scenes and long chapters should hold your interest about ninety percent of the time. It’s a novel that might have been improved by some judicious editing. Since the original novel was written in German, I (of course) read it in an English translation. I’d like to be able to see I read German fluently, but if I said it, it wouldn’t be true.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Baby No Baby

Baby No Baby ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Little Thelma Kane, eleventh grader at Button Gwinnett High School, had been absent for two weeks. When she returned to school, it was with her mother, Nova Kane. The two of them presented themselves in the administrative office.

“I’m Nova Kane,” Little Thelma Kane’s mother said to Ima Chiclet, the receptionist. “I want to see the principal, Mr. Middledyke.”

“Do you have an appointment?” Ima Chiclet asked.

“No.”

“You have to have an appointment to see Principal Middledyke. He’s terribly busy.”

“Well, I don’t have one, so where does that leave us?”

“You don’t get in.”

“Look here, doll face,” Nova Kane said. “I’m in no mood. I had to take time off from my job to be here.”

“What is the nature of your business?”

“It only concerns Mr. Middledyke.”

Ima Chiclet sighed and stuck the tip of her tongue out between her ruby-red lips. “I don’t think Mr. Middledyke will see you without knowing the reason.”

“Just tell him it’s personal.”

“Name?”

“Nova Kane, mother of eleventh grader Little Thelma Kane.”

“I’ll see if he’s free.”

Ima Chiclet stood up, swiveled her hips across the floor, tapped on a door in the back wall, went through the door and closed it. In less than a minute she came back out.

“Mr. Middledyke says he will see you, but I have to check you for firearms before I let you in.”

“Check me for what?”

“I’ll need to look inside your purse.”

“Look inside my what?”

“Your purse!” Ima Chiclet said. “Please open your purse and let me take a look inside!”

Nova Kane reluctantly opened her purse. “If you find anything interesting in there, let me know.”

Ima Chiclet squinted into the depths of Nova Kane’s purse and then lifted her head and nodded.

“What about you?” she asked Little Thelma Kane.

“I don’t have a purse.”

“Are you hiding a gun in your coat?”

“Why would I be?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“No, I’m not hiding a gun anywhere.”

“Hold your coat open please.”

“What?”

“Hold your coat open!”

Little Thelma Kane held her coat open. Ima Chiclet stood up and patted her down, inside her coat and out.

“Hey!” Little Thelma Kane said. “Not so rough!”

“You’re both clean,” Ima Chiclet said. “You may go right in.”

Mr. Middledyke was a small man sitting behind a large desk. He didn’t bother to smile or stand up as Little Thelma Kane and Nova Kane walked in. He knew they weren’t important.

“What can I do for you today?” he asked.

“Mr. Middledyke?” Nova Kane asked.

“Yes. Who might you be?”

“I’m Nova Kane, mother of eleventh grade Little Thelma Kane.”

“And who might you be?” Mr. Middledyke asked Little Thelma Kane. He pulled his thick-lensed glasses down so he could look at her over the top of them.

“She’s my daughter, eleventh grader Little Thelma Kane,” Nova Kane said.

“Can’t she answer for herself?” Mr. Middledyke asked.

“I’m eleventh grader Little Thelma Kane,” Little Thelma Kane said.

“Are you a student at this school?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Say ‘yes, sir’ when addressing me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s better,” Mr. Middledyke said. “What can I do for you today?”

“Little Thelma Kane wants to quit school,” Nova Kane said.

“What?”

Nova Kane leaned over the desk and said in a loud voice: “MY DAUGHTER, ELEVENTH GRADER LITTLE THELMA KANE, WANTS TO QUIT SCHOOL!”

“I need to hear it from her own lips,” he said.

“I WANT TO QUIT SCHOOL!” Little Thelma Kane shouted.

“Oh, no, no, no!” he said. “We discourage anyone from dropping out of school! I need to know the reason for your contemplating such a move.”

He gestured to the two chairs in front of his desk and Nova Kane and Little Thelma Kane seated themselves in them.

“I’m getting married in a couple of weeks,” Little Thelma Kane said.

“That’s right,” Nova Kane said. “She’s getting married.”

“Married? At your age? You’re too young!”

“I’m sixteen,” Little Thelma Kane said.

“Just give me the paper to sign giving my permission for her to quit school and I’ll sign it,” Nova Kane said.

Mr. Middledyke looked from Little Thelma Kane to Nova Kane and back again, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “It’s never a good idea to quit school,” he said. “If you quit school, you’ll always regret it. We’ll do whatever we can to make sure you stay in school.”

“You don’t understand,” Nova Kane said. “And how could you? I don’t understand it myself.”

“I’m going to have a baby in about seven months,” Little Thelma Kane said.

“Oh, my, my, my!” Mr. Middledyke said in the voice of a fussy old woman. “You should never have let that happen! Is the boy a student at this school?”

“Boy?” Little Thelma Kane asked.

“The father of the baby!”

“He’s not a boy,” Nova Kane offered. “He’s thirty-two years old.”

“No, my boyfriend is out of school,” Little Thelma Kane said.

“He’s been married a couple times before and he’s got several kids already,” Nova Kane said.

“Three,” Little Thelma Kane said. “He has three children.”

“Oh my! Mr. Middledyke said. “Do you know what you’re taking on?”

“The kids don’t live with him. They live with their mothers, but he pays plenty in child support.”

“And what does this man do for a living?”

“He’s a hair burner.”

“He’s a what?”

“She means he’s a hairdresser,” Nova Kane said.

“He does men and women,” Little Thelma Kane said.

“So this man you’re going to marry is twice your age and he works as a hairdresser?”

“That’s right.”

“Where does he live? Does he have a home?”

“Right now he lives in a mobile home.”

“She means a trailer,” Nova Kane said.

“Yeah, he lives in a trailer right now,” Little Thelma Kane said. “It’s all he can afford with all the child support he pays.”

“Do you really want to marry him?” Mr. Middledyke asked. “This…what’s his name?”

“His name is Lester Upjohn, but his professional name is Mr. Lance.”

“Do you really want to marry this Lester Upjohn?”

“Of course I do! I’m in love with him!”

“At age sixteen, are you sure you know what love is?”

“Of course I do!”

“She’s terribly in love,” Nova Kane said.

“And you encourage this?” he asked.

“Do I have a choice?” Nova Kane said. “Now that there’s a baby on the way, I want Little Thelma Kane to marry the baby’s father. I won’t have any bastard children in my family!”

“She doesn’t have to get married just because she’s going to have a baby,” Mr. Middledyke said.

“Of course she has to get married! Do you think I want people saying she’s a whore?”

“She could have the baby and put it up for adoption,” he said.

“Nobody in my family has ever given away a baby before,” Nova Kane said.

“What do you think about it?” he asked Little Thelma Kane.

“Can’t we just sign the paper and go?” Little Thelma Kane said.

“I’m just trying to get you to see there are other alternatives,” Mr. Middledyke said. “You can get married and still stay in school and have the baby. Other people have done it.”

“People would make fun of her,” Nova Kane said. “She’s already a freak as it is.”

“Not everybody thinks I’m a freak!”

“You can stay in school until right before your baby is born. Other girls have done it.”

“And then what?” Thelma Kane asked.

“When she’s over the ordeal of giving birth, she can come back to school and start afresh. She can make up the classes she missed or she can go to summer school. I just want her to know she doesn’t have to leave school just because she’s going to have a baby.”

“Can I strap the baby to my back and bring it to school with me?” Little Thelma Kane asked.

“Well, I don’t know…”

“Can I nurse it in class and get up from my seat and change its diaper when I need to?”

“Well, I think you’d have to get somebody to take care of it during the day when you’re in school.”

“And then, when I go home in the afternoon, will I be able to spend all the rest of my time taking care of it and listening to it scream all night?”

“That’s what it means to be a mother,” Mr. Middledyke said.

“I don’t think so!”

“What are you saying?” Nova Kane asked.

“I don’t want a baby!  I don’t want to get married! I don’t want to quit school! I don’t want to do anything! I only want to sign the paper and go home!”

“She’s overwrought,” Nova Kane said to Mr. Middledyke by way of explanation.

“A hormonal swing, I’d say,” Mr. Middledyke said.

“I don’t want to marry Lester. I thought I did but I don’t. I don’t love him. I don’t even like him.”

“What about the baby?” Nova Kane asked. “The baby needs a father. I don’t want an out-of-wedlock baby for a grandchild!”

“Baby, baby, baby! I’m sick of everybody talking about the baby all the time, as if I don’t matter at all! Don’t you get it? There is no baby!”

“What?” Nova Kane said. “You’ve been lying the whole time?”

“No, not the whole time. When I was sick, I thought I had a baby coming, but then the sickness went away and I started having my period again.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this?” Nova Kane asked.

“Because I thought I really wanted to marry Lester. He said he loved me and he’d be good to me and the baby. We’d be a regular little family and we’d be happy.”

“You little liar!” Nova Kane said. “Wait till I get you home!”

“Now, now!” Mr. Middledyke said. “There’s no need for any of that!”

“I thought it would be fun to not have to go to school and stay at home in Lester’s trailer all day waiting long for him to come home from the shop, smelling like hair chemicals and lady’s perfume. But then I realized that’s all my life would ever be for as long as I live, and I want more from life than that!”

“So Lester believes you have a baby on the way?”

“Yeah, I haven’t told him the truth yet. I thought I’d wait until after we’re married and tell him the baby was a false alarm.”

“You should never lie to a man about something as important as that,” Mr. Middledyke said.

I don’t know where she ever learned to be such a little liar,” Nova Kane said. “That’s not the way she was raised.”

“So, can we call the whole thing off?” Little Thelma Kane asked. “I don’t want to quit school, and I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

“I’m glad you’re not quitting school,” Mr. Middledyke said. “It always breaks my heart to see anybody quit school.”

“I think you really mean it,” Little Thelma Kane said.

“You’ve given me a splitting headache,” Nova Kane said. “I just want to go home and lie down and try to get this awful thing out of my mind.”

“I’d like to come back to school on Monday morning,” Little Thelma Kane said to Mr. Middledyke. “If that’s all right.”

“I think you’re making the right decision.”

That evening Little Thelma Kane had what would be her last date with Lester Upjohn, otherwise known as Mr. Lance. She told him the truth about the baby. In his relief that he wasn’t about to become a father again, he became overly affectionate, but Little Thelma Kane was having none of it. She had become revirginized, and a virgin she would remain, at least until she had her high school diploma.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Under the Bright Lights ~ A Capsule Book Review

Under the Bright Lights ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Daniel Woodrell (born 1952) is among the best current American writers. His novels The Death of Sweet Mister, Tomato Red, and The Maid’s Version are among my favorites. His 1986 novel, Under the Bright Lights, is a noirish story set in the fictional Missouri town of Saint Bruno, a medium-sized city of 200,000 residents. Saint Bruno sits on edge of the roiling, mysterious Mississippi River and has a distinctly Southern quality to it, as well as a French flavor. A lot of the residents of Saint Bruno are of French descent; a largely French section of town is known as “Frogtown.”

When Arthur Rankin, prominent black politician and porno-movie theatre owner, is shot and killed in his own home, police detective Rene Shade is called in to investigate. Rene is a former boxer who might have been a “contendah” but wasn’t. He has lived in Saint Bruno his whole life and has a less-than-spectacular personal life, living over a poolroom with his mother. In his professional capacity as police detective, he peels back the layers of corruption to get to the truth behind the murder of Arthur Rankin. There are low-level gangsters and high-level gangsters, shady politicians (sometimes politicians and gangsters are the same thing), thugs, bimbos, redneck punks, losers, not-very-bright paid killers, and lots of local color in the steamy river town of Saint Bruno, Missouri. Oh, and let us not forget, there’s a slam-bam climactic scene and shootout in the primeval swamp called “Marais de Croche” (Crooked Swamp). You wouldn’t want to be stuck in this creepy swamp alone at night. You might never get out.

Under the Bright Lights is an atmospheric, smart-talking, tightly written short novel (160 pages) by a very talented writer, Daniel Woodrell. I met him once at one of his book signings in St. Louis and he’s as unpretentious in person as his writing is impressive on the printed page.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Hotel de Dream ~ A Capsule Book Review

Hotel de Dream ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

American writer Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1871, and died of tuberculosis in Germany in 1900 at the age of twenty-eight. He was one of the most gifted young writers of his generation. His 1895 Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, achieved worldwide acclaim for its realistic depiction of war, which Crane wrote without ever having seen battle.

Hotel de Dream, a 2007 novel by Edmund White, is a fictionalized account of Stephen Crane’s final illness and his struggle to complete his final work of fiction called The Painted Boy (which only exists in Hotel de Dream and Crane never actually wrote). The Painted Boy was in the mold of Crane’s earlier novel, Maggie, Girl of the Streets, and was quite daring for its time because it deals with an “invert” (a coy, turn-of-the-century word for a homosexual). The invert in question is named Elliott. He’s a sixteen-year-old boy of the streets, a male prostitute, who comes to New York from a farm, where he was sexually abused by his father and older brothers. As a rent-boy, Elliott meets stodgy, married, middle-aged banker Theodore Koch. After a few “dates,” Koch is convinced he is in love with the syphilitic boy and is willing to risk everything—career, marriage, home, children, place in the world—to be with him. He rents a room where he and Elliott can meet every day. When he is blackmailed, he begins stealing money from the bank where he works. This cannot end well, for him or for Elliott.

Hotel de Dream is a story-within-a-story. Sections about Crane’s private life are interspersed with his fictional story of Theodore Koch and Elliott. Crane is too weak from his tuberculosis to write, so he “dictates” The Painted Boy to his common-law wife, Cora. She knows that Crane is dying, is in love with him, and will do anything to help him.

If you are a student of American literature or a fan of Stephen Crane’s naturalistic style of writing, Hotel de Dream is well worth your time. It’s a fascinating fictional excursion into the life of a real-life American writer, his time and the people he knew. And it’s a reminder, once again, of what a terrible disease tuberculosis is and how fortunate we are to live in an age in which it has been eradicated.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Rise of Silas Lapham ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Rise of Silas Lapham ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

American writer William Dean Howells lived from 1837 to 1920. After the “romanticist” writers of the nineteenth century such as Hawthorne and Poe, Howells was an advocate of “realism” in fiction; realism, that is, that’s not sordid. He was at the forefront of a new wave of American writing and has been called the “Dean of American Letters.” Of the thirty-five novels he wrote, The Rise of Silas Lapham is the most popular and most enduring.

The fictional Silas Lapham is an American “type,” a self-made millionaire, one of Boston’s nouveau riche in the decades after the Civil War. Despite his fortune and his station in the business world, “Corporal” Lapham (he fought at the Battle of Gettysburg) is a little rough around the edges and doesn’t quite fit in with Boston crème de la crème. His grammar borders on the atrocious and he tends to be a bit of a blowhard.  He has a matter-of-fact (she nags) wife named Persis who speaks her mind and doesn’t mind telling Silas exactly what she thinks of him and his business dealings. He also has two deb daughters, Penelope and Irene, of marriageable age. Penelope is the older of the two; she’s serious, clever and not so pretty as Irene.

As you might expect, Silas came from humble beginnings. His family were people of the earth. When his father discovers a “mineral paint mine” on their property in Vermont, Silas is able to turn the enterprise into a successful money-making venture. Soon he is at the forefront of the American paint market and has all the heartache and responsibilities of a titan of industry. To solidity his family’s status in Boston society, he has his heart set on building a showy, expensive ($100,000 in 1875) mansion in one of the most fashionable sections of Boston.

The Coreys are a snooty, blue-blood Boston family of Silas Lapham’s acquaintance. He would like to be like the Coreys if only he had more “class.” He believes that any association with the Corey family would benefit him professionally and socially. The Coreys have a handsome son named Tom. When Tom begins hanging around the Lapham home, everybody believes he’s interested in Irene, the younger and prettier of the two daughters. No, wait a minute! He’s not interested in Irene, but in the older, homelier daughter, Penelope. This confusion sets up a love-story subplot with many complications. How can Penelope marry a man with whom her younger sister was once in love?

As might be expected, Silas Lapham experiences financial reverses in his business empire, facing some unexpected competition from a rival paint manufacturer. Not only that, his beloved Boston mansion, still under construction, is destroyed in a fire, one week after its insurance policy lapsed. As quick as you can say “financial collapse,” he faces insolvency and the loss of his world.

The Rise of Silas Lapham is a solid American classic, easy to read and with none of the antique qualities that are sometimes associated with 19th century American writing, such as tortured, twisted sentences and high-blown syntax. If you, like me, first encountered The Rise of Silas Lapham in your younger days in school, it is well worth another look.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997