PARTISAN REVIEW
of records, could ignore so extraordinary an event, Fenton pay no
attention. "Form-music! The kind of pattern life's got, Sandburg's got
But I can understand how that's hard to see from New York."
"I live in Texas."
"Don't any of you people
like
music? You can keep talking if you
like-you don't have to be still."
"You
live
in Texas-but it's where you come from that counts.
Where were you born?"
"New York."
"You
see!"
He turned triumphantly toward Fenton, who was nod–
ding as if
in
agreement, though with whom it would have been difficult
to say. "I suppose you like Wallace Stevens?" He said it as if it were the
name of a disease.
"Sooo- I'll put on the Brahms,
and
I'll have another drink." She
poured herself another, very dark, with the air of someone compounding
a dangerous remedy.
"I met him in Chicago once, in 'nineteen or 'twenty," Fenton put
in, before I could answer.
"Who?" I asked. It annoyed me to think of the year 1919, when I
was five years old and Fenton already full of the power to harm and
love.
"Who, for Christ sake? Sandburg! He was stupid, you know–
just a fish gasping on the strand. The only time he was really happy
was when he was playing that damn guitar of his. He should have
been a vaudeville actor, a dialect comedian-in the American dialect.
Like the Jews who used to imitate Jews." He looked over at me with
a wink of complicity. "Personally I prefer Smith and Dale. 'I'd like to
see you inhale?' 'You'd like to see me in hell?'
II
His Yiddish accent
was deliberately atrocious, a real provocation.
"But this is Weingartner! I borrowed it specially for tonight. Just
listen to the-"
"Goddam it," Hank shouted, pounding one of his large, red fists
on the floor, "I still want to know what's wrong with him. Why doesn't
anybody face up to the-"
"Oh, shush, dear, you'll wake the baby!" Judith had moved over
beside Hank, and was ruffling his hair tenderly.
"Don't get me wrong, Amsterdam. I like
your
poetry, too. I like
different kinds of poetry-and I think you're goddam good. You're no
Wallace Stevens."
"Thanks."
"No! Don't give me that New York high hat. I like what you do,
