New Year's Eve
To Edna Phillips
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
T
HE EVENING
of the profound holiday drew much strength and
unhappiness from such depths as the afternoon, the week, the year
of unhappiness, and the lives that long had been lived. This secular
holiday
is
full of pain because it is both an ending and a beginning.
In this way, it participates in some of the strangeness and difficulty
of both birth and death.
On this memorable evening and at this New Year's party, the
idiom which prevailed Inight perhaps be said to be that of unpleasant
cleverness. The party had not been the object of careful thought, nor
had it been inspired by the emotion of celebration. Hence some of
the guests hoped vaguely until the afternoon darkened that they
might be asked to come to some other party. This hope communicated
itself like uproarious laughter as some of the guests spoke to each
other during the winter afternoon. Each in his tone of voice unknow–
ingly communicated the sense that this party was not the party which,
in the depths, the psyche desired like first prize.
Grant Landis was the only human being who did not have this
feeling about the party. He labored
all
afternoon in the office of Cen–
taur Editions, a small publishing house of which he was one of the
owners, and when anyone called him upon the telephone or visited
him, he invited each one to come to the party too. He was a human
being who po&<;essed an infinite interest in other human beings and an
inexhaustible energy, an energy so great that it triumphed over reality
when it was dismal by moving forward to fresh arenas of frenzied
activity.
Early in the afternoon, Shenandoah Fish, a youthful author of
promise, entered the office and Grant immediately invited him to the
party. Shenandoah had come to the office because he had little else
that he wanted to do, because he wanted to converse with Grant
Landis, and because he hoped to hear more praise of his small book,
which Centaur Editions had published in October.
Eager to hear more about his small book, the invitation to the
