28
GILBERT SORRENTINO
He knew · as his eversharp tool built his monstrous machines
he was doomed, he was just about through. "Immoral, unstruc–
tured, unfinished, clever but fey"; "murderous, bitter, cluttered
with meaningless litter"; "obscurantist mutter"; "a quitter"; " a
sitter of fences"; "no work and all play"; "sheer kindness to shut
him away"; "a gutter mentality"; "hostile to everything gay";
"one hoped that Studs Lonigan had had his day"; "mad overkill";
"are these second-rate characters worth all this pother?"; "a cross
between Selby DeCubb and Weary O'Farrell"; " a stinking kettle of
fish"; "the novelist's swan song"; "the novelist's death wish"; "no
laughs in
this
barrel"; "more than just a bit petty and 'in' "; "at
times he commits every professional sin"; "for a 'comic' writer,
needlessly cruel"; "grating and tedious"; "he winks at the reader";
"rather thin gruel"; "self-righteous preaching and prating"; "the
writer's own cleverness sinks him"; "at best, a mordant letter";
"relies mostly on rancor"; "maligns all his betters"; "vacuity is the
milieu"; "he here goes too far"; "wildly destructive"; "supposedly
aimed at the
au courant
few"; "very crude"; "worships and crawls
at the feet of the Beat"; "just another honkie dude"; "a wise
guy"; "a cynic"; "no prude"; "isn't fully a novel"; "isn't really a
book"; "shows genuine loathing"; "the clinical plotting's a bore";
"his people are merely stick figures"; "a quickly tiring trick."
Yet did he not ofttimes contemplate rising or sailing or
climbing into the sky, eternally azure, a snowy white cloud etched
on the glorious blue?
He did.
And didn't he dream of glamorous friends who would love
him forever, of crystal decanters, wonderful wines, all the con–
comitant items, lustrous and glowing, designed to make life worth
the living?
Surely he did.
Did he not sometimes wonder why it was given to him to
write these millions of words? to comb over his life for a phrase?
But of course.
What of watching the sea?
His rarely enjoyed delight.
