NEW YEAR'S EVE
341
In general, Oliver's cynicism was the end of the period of good
feeling, which might have ended anyway because of the progress of
the drinking.
Then the telephone pierced everyone's ears. Grant had ceased
his calls for a moment in order to look up a number in the directory.
As
Arthur went to answer the phone, everyone forgot about Oliver's
remark, though the sourness of the emotion remained like dregs.
Leon Berg was on the telephone. He was detested or disliked by
everyone at the party because his chief activity was to explain to
all
authors that they were without talent. From what Arthur was say–
ing in reply, it was clear that Leon wanted to come to the party, and
had sufficiently downed his resentment at not being asked to the
party to humiliate himself by asking if he might come.
At the party a discussion of Leon's character began, and in this
discussion, the truth was used as a form of falsehood, since bias, like
a squint, selected only his unpleasant and evil traits.
Meanwhile Leon left the room in which he lived and stopped
to exchange a word with Claude Kagan, a minor poet who admired
and feared him, impressed by the fact that he wrote nothing at all
and condemned everyone, including Shakespeare. Leon told Claude
where he was going and when Claude asked without much hope if
he might come too, Leon replied that such an addition would be quite
impossible. He then remarked quickly that all modern poets were
worthless because they did not have the effect upon History of John
L.
Lewis and Bing Crosby, and concluded by saying that there would
be no new world war because so many human beings expected a war
and so many human beings had never been right about anything.
At the party the conversation continued to be a discussion of
Leon, and Oliver revived the rumor that Leon's second name had
been Bergson, shortened by
him
because he was unable to endure the
rivalry between his own ambition and Bergson's fame. In fairness to
Leon, some of his best stories were quoted, in particular the one about
the man who visited the World's Fair and said that the one thing
lacking, the one important thing, was a screamatorium, a place where
everyone who wished might go to scream because of the quality of life
in this period.
Leon was walking crosstown and losing his feeling of pleasure
that he was going to the party. He stopped to have a drink, but this
did not help him very much. Resentment mounted in him and he
wondered if they were laughing at him because he had asked to come
to the party. He decided that this was an untrue view inspired by his
sense of persecution, but he was none too sure.
