I have a week to catch up on this journal, and an extremely busy week it has been. But first, a heartfelt damn it.
He came up in conversation yesterday: my father asked if I knew the physics of incendiary bombing, how to create a firestorm in a city; and I did, because of Slaughterhouse-Five. But I will remember other stories, too. And grieve that there will be no strange, spiky, bleak, funny more.
For Harry's pleasure, and our pleasure, too, we had him read from the scene where he beats up his wife. It was a play in itself, the way Harry did it, and Tennessee Williams hadn't written it all either. Tennessee Williams didn't write the part, for instance, where Harry, who weighs about one hundred forty-five, who's about five feet, eight inches tall, added fifty pounds to his weight and four inches to his height by just picking up a playbook. He had a short little double-breasted bellows-back grade-school graduation suit coat on and a dinky little red tie with a horsehead on it. He took off the coat and tie, opened his collar, then turned his back to Doris and me, getting up steam for the part. There was a great big rip in the back of his shirt, and it looked like a fairly new shirt too. He'd ripped it on purpose, so he could be that much more like Marlon Brando, right from the first.
When he faced us again, he was huge and handsome and conceited and cruel. Doris read the part of Stella, the wife, and Harry bullied that old, old lady into believing that she was a sweet, pregnant girl married to a sexy gorilla who was going to beat her brains out. She had me believing it too. And I read the lines of Blanche, her sister in the play, and darned if Harry didn’t scare me into feeling like a drunk and faded Southern belle.
And then, while Doris and I were getting over our emotional experiences, like people coming out from under ether, Harry put down the playbook, put on his coat and tie, and turned into the pale hardware-store clerk again.
"Was was that all right?" he said, and he seemed pretty sure he wouldn’t get the part.
"Well," I said, "for a first reading, that wasn't too bad."
"Is there a chance I'll get the part?" he said. I don't know why he always had to pretend there was some doubt about his getting a part, but he did.
"I think we can safely say we're leaning powerfully in your direction," I told him.
He was very pleased. "Thanks! Thanks a lot!" he said, and he shook my hand.
—Kurt Vonnegut, "Who Am I This Time?" (1961)
He came up in conversation yesterday: my father asked if I knew the physics of incendiary bombing, how to create a firestorm in a city; and I did, because of Slaughterhouse-Five. But I will remember other stories, too. And grieve that there will be no strange, spiky, bleak, funny more.
For Harry's pleasure, and our pleasure, too, we had him read from the scene where he beats up his wife. It was a play in itself, the way Harry did it, and Tennessee Williams hadn't written it all either. Tennessee Williams didn't write the part, for instance, where Harry, who weighs about one hundred forty-five, who's about five feet, eight inches tall, added fifty pounds to his weight and four inches to his height by just picking up a playbook. He had a short little double-breasted bellows-back grade-school graduation suit coat on and a dinky little red tie with a horsehead on it. He took off the coat and tie, opened his collar, then turned his back to Doris and me, getting up steam for the part. There was a great big rip in the back of his shirt, and it looked like a fairly new shirt too. He'd ripped it on purpose, so he could be that much more like Marlon Brando, right from the first.
When he faced us again, he was huge and handsome and conceited and cruel. Doris read the part of Stella, the wife, and Harry bullied that old, old lady into believing that she was a sweet, pregnant girl married to a sexy gorilla who was going to beat her brains out. She had me believing it too. And I read the lines of Blanche, her sister in the play, and darned if Harry didn’t scare me into feeling like a drunk and faded Southern belle.
And then, while Doris and I were getting over our emotional experiences, like people coming out from under ether, Harry put down the playbook, put on his coat and tie, and turned into the pale hardware-store clerk again.
"Was was that all right?" he said, and he seemed pretty sure he wouldn’t get the part.
"Well," I said, "for a first reading, that wasn't too bad."
"Is there a chance I'll get the part?" he said. I don't know why he always had to pretend there was some doubt about his getting a part, but he did.
"I think we can safely say we're leaning powerfully in your direction," I told him.
He was very pleased. "Thanks! Thanks a lot!" he said, and he shook my hand.
—Kurt Vonnegut, "Who Am I This Time?" (1961)
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