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PARTISAN REVIEW
would have been pl ay ing music a ll day, keeping time to the music, and
by the end , a triumph a l column o f reco rds would be pil ed next to the
victrol a. All th e ashtrays would be fill ed with Gauloi ses Bl eues. A
visitor could count the stubs and fi gure tha t there wo uld be one burnt–
out Bl eu fo r each page he had produced . And , fa r from being tired,
Henry would be full of vin ega r, ready to reach fo r a bo ttl e- of a velve ty
Nuits St. Georges, say -when Fred came home in th e evening and sa t
down a t the ki tchen ta ble fo r a cha t.
Fred was working on a no vel o f hi s own in just the o ppos ite way
from Henry's vo lcani c outpo urin gs. As Paul ette put it : " Monsieur
Hen ri can type much faster than you , and when he sits a t hi s typewriter
he goes on fo r ho urs without a stop ." Henry was un concerned about
hi s produ cti vity because he produced so much , whil e Fred avo ided that
concern by de libera tely limiting hi s writing to no mo re than two pages
a day.
If
he reached th e bo ttom of tha t second page (and mos t often he
di dn' t reach it ) he' d sto p abruptl y, even in the middl e o f a sentence. T o
Fred thi s p rocedure was eminentl y cl ea r and perfectl y ra tion a l. As he
o ft en expl a in ed it : "T wo pages a day, 365 days in the yea r, th a t makes
730 pages.
If
I can do 250 in a yea r I'll be sa ti sfi ed. I'm no t writing a
roman fl euve."
He was in fact writing a book in French ca ll ed
Sen timen ts limitroph es- a
book of " periph era l feelin gs," a work
abo ut the fragments o f hi s memo ry and the streams of associa tion
fl ow ing between memo ri es. Although these memo ri es went bac k to hi s
chil dhood , they also included recent ones and in vo lved po rtra its of
H enry, June, and Anals Nin . H enry was certa in tha t he himself could
no t ma tch the deli ca te power and transpa rency, like tha t o f a perfect
wa tercolor, o f Alf's book. Fred 's writing he thought o f as a "subtl e
dist illa ti on " and declared tha t he liked it better than an ythin g he coul d
do himself. But tho ugh their methods of compos ition were different,
the books shared a simila r vi ew of the fl exibility and rapidity of the
faculty of memo ry, were influenced by Proust's trea tment of reco ll ec–
ti on , and had some o f the same ma teri a ls : their mutua l acqua intances.
And fin all y, th ey were,
a~
Henry wrote to Alf a fter bo th vo lumes were
published, "compani on books in mi sery and lo nel iness."
In the evening, then , Henry and Fred were likely to loa f owr a
bo ttl e of wine and ta lk abo ut their work for the day , add up their fund s
and di scuss th e women upon the ho ri zon .
If
th ey lingered lo ng enough
to open a second bo ttl e of win e and bo th started
to
feel eupho ri c, Fred
mi ght suddenl y stop the conversa ti on and se ize Henry by the arm ,
begging him to brin g him with him to Ameri ca should he ever return .
T hen he' d urge Henry to give him an account of hi s travels in that
