JAY MARTIN
615
hand and he' d be annotating the marg ins, a t first sparsely, then
copiously. From tha t stage to the next required onl y a jump to the
typewriter, usuall y to copy out a parti cul arl y meaty passage. Then he' d
toss the book aside in order to start ri ght into squeezing the juices out
of it, poss ibl y in a letter to Emil Schnell ock or Anals. By now hi s
fin gers would be fl ying over the keys, as if he had leaped with hardl y a
transiti on from the " Moonli ght Sona ta" to the "Minute Waltz," and
he' d be ready to turn to "The Last Book." He went like li ghtning once
he go t to thi s work . T he associa tions tha t had begun in his reading
would accumul a te and bubbl e into new bl endings which went fa r
beyond their ori g in . Those were the days when writing was as easy as
singing-no wonder tha t even as he was typing he'd occasionall y burst
into song. T en o r mo re sheets might easil y roll in and out of his
typewriter before he was ready, having mi ssed breakfas t, to stop fo r
lunch . He d idn 't worry any more about losing an idea. For the first
time in hi s life, to begin writing seemed no harder than turning on a
tap. Like running wa ter, the stream o f recoll ecti ons, words, and ideas
was always there-he had onl y to turn on the fauce t to have the fl ow
begin or snap it off to give the illusion tha t it had ceased .
After lunch , whi ch would sometimes be washed down with a fresh
Vouvray or a Muscadet, he'd a rrange everything neatl y and go through
hi s dail y ceremon y: he' d undress completely, put on his pajamas, and
tuck himself cosil y into bed for a nice nap. This seemed to hi s fri ends to
be an incredibl y self-indul gent luxury, but it was a necessity of hi s
routine: hi s sleep not onl y, as he claimed, put " velvet in hi s vertebrae,"
it was a delibera te damming up o f the stream until , on its own , it
overfl owed its banks. His dreams, which he culti va ted, were also part of
hi s work, impa rting new angles and different directions
to
the
tho ughts of the morning. The nap was a lso, clearl y, a beautiful return
to hi s childhood, whose bourgeois tranquility the Cli chy fl a t recall ed .
He was like a child tucked into hi s bed for hi s afternoon nap, a good
boy. So much of hi s adult life had destroyed his dreams tha t he was
committed now to dreaming his way backward to childhood, and
forward to art again.
Upon awakening he mi ght even ho ld back the headwaters a little
longer whil e he took an excursion on his bi cycle or by foot. By the time
he sa t down a t the typewriter again his fingers were itching
to
slaughter the machine, like a drummer. The fl ood would rumbl e alon g
for several hours of the la te afternoon . On this work schedul e, twenty,
thirty, forty, and-on o ne day-forty- fi ve pages (w ith two carbons)
would be stacked up bes ide the laboring typewriter before dinner. He
