PARTISAN REVIEW
35
report
(except once) never tallies with my own. The once was Jack
Kerouac's
The Subterraneans
in which he describes with - to my
mind (for what that sieved instrument is worth) - astonishing ac–
curacy an evening he spent with William Burroughs and me. Every–
thing
is
perfectly recalled until the crucial moment when Jack and I
went to bed together at the Chelsea Hotel and, as he told me later,
disingenuously, "I forgot." I said he had not. "Well, maybe I wanted
to." So much for the tell-it-like-it-is school.
Memoirists, however, are seldom
.as
precise as novelists. I have
been reading John Lehmann's autobiography in which he describes
our meeting with Andre Gide. He reports that later I "sighed" be–
cause
Gide had made no mention of a book I'd sent
him
when, in
actual fact, I had simply wondered if he had ever got the book.
not quite the same thing as being disappointed, and all that that
implies. Then Lehmann neglects to mention the only interesting
thing the Master said. He had just been awarded - to his obvious
delight - the Nobel Prize. With a great smile, the deep
Comedie
Franfaise
voice intoned,
uPremier Ie Kinsey Report, et apres
fa
Ie
Prix
Nobel."
He then gave me a copy of
Corydon,
a book which
he assured me solemnly he seldom gave anyone. On the- fly leaf he
wrote
avec le sympathie,
a rather cold dedication according to a
knowing French friend.
What else do I remember of Gide? Short, thick chested, with
large peasant hands; wearing a dark-green velvet jacket, beret, large
round spectacles. He sat at a plain work table surrounded by books
on two levels; the upper level reached by stairs. Open in front of
him (staged for our benefit?) was a pornographic novel by an
Anglican priest recently retired to the English countryside. The pages
were beautifully hand-printed, and there were a number of draw–
ings
of boys being debauched. With a grin, Gide said he had re–
ceived the manuscript some time ago but had not yet decided how
to answer its priestly author.
"C'est interessant, maitre?"
I
asked.
"Qui. Mais Ie style, Mlas, c'est un petit peu trop literarie pour
mai."
Impression: a nervous, malicious intelligence, not very like the
somewhat histrionic self-examiner of the
Journals,
forever preparing
a brief for the defense to be tried
in
the court of a Protestant god
whose jurisdiction the defense must, in all conscience, deny.
Thinking of Gide, I suddenly wonder why it is that so few
