404
PARTISAN REVIEW
you've read what I've tried of this sort, but I can tell you I'd thrown
it into the desk after a year's work. I couldn't find a line that didn't
break out from me. But then one Sunday morning I got my fingers
into it, into just the right way, and afterwards it simply came."
Confer.
Sunday it had been-the sky flung open by the beating sun,
white beaches slipping away like whirled wake from the sides of the
car-Sunday, Sunday, when Flint, years after Baltimore, set him
down. The noble old chair was accepted and he had gone to the is–
sues driving out the Cape. What can I do, Flinty. The dead end,
the school.
Goddamnit Flinty, when we were it there was the Cap. Flight
from the skipj.ack to the moon in the sea. A thing to hate and com–
pany in the hating. A whole wide dollar-damned world to trade for
verse. And after, a hunger march-sing God on relief. And after
that, battle again.
Man/red,
by Asst. Prof. G. Gordon.
o
Flint we have lives not offices. What has Maine to com–
municate with Texas; what do you say to the notebook?
Flint set him down: "All romance." Calder is all romance,
how high, how high. "Now look at me. Thirty years ago I sat out
one term with Homer J.-right where you're going to be-and
damned
if
he didn't teach me something.
"How to paragraph." Flint was serious. "Just that, paragraph.
How to make them come on, how to set one up for the next, keep
wheels turning all the time. I didn't know how to do it and Homer
showed me."
So here was the task. Wait for Flint to come and show him
how to tum wheels. Speak boldly at the beginning:
"I am not interested in dealing with any of you who wish to
be writers. For you and me, desire is a dangerous thing. I want only
those among you who feel that they are writers, that the thing is
done and over and that they are helpless before
it."
And call for an incident, "a moment of your own that's still
breathing~et
it down in oh a thousand words at most, and then
I'll ask you in for a conference before you start to r,aise it up any
higher."
