REVIEW AMERICANA

 

Spring 2021

Volume 16, Issue 1

https://americanpopularculture.com/review_americana/spring_2021/kaplan.htm




BARRY JAY KAPLAN

 

 

The Limits of Admiration


If Emily and Olivia did not actually finish their first novels on the same day or even precisely in the same week, they did finish them near enough to when the other did to establish the mutual event – though they had already been friends for three or four years in a supportive, semi-non-competitive-we're-in-this-together sort of way – as the official beginning of their very long friendship.

"I was incredibly nervous," Olivia said as she related the trip to the post office. "I was sick with nerves."

Emily laughed. "Don't be ridiculous. You're brilliant. Our books are brilliant. It's just a matter of time."

Olivia told Emily how she had handed her manuscript to the postal clerk and replied "I hope so" when the clerk said: "First class?"

Each waited for the response to her manuscript from agents to whom they had been recommended personally, in a way that a novelist would say characterized who each one was. Emily put waiting out of her mind; she had her baby daughter to watch, household chores to do while her husband wrote his dissertation, and a few articles to write for New World magazine, and so her mind was, for the most part, otherwise engaged. It was not only that; Emily assumed acceptance of her manuscript.

Olivia was not so optimistic or confident. She was living at the time in a furnished sublet apartment in an un-gentrified part of town, from where she had to take a taxi to the nearest supermarket, and all she had brought with her to her new residence were a few boxes of books she had not yet unpacked in any of the four places she'd lived since she finished graduate school and probably would not unpack here, plus a suitcase. Her friend Carla, who owned the lease on the apartment, was in Corfu with her Greek actor/poet/rich man's son/boyfriend and her plans were "indefinite" – meaning that she could come back the moment Nicos or Stavros or whatever the Greek's name was dropped her, and Olivia would be sleeping on the sofa until she found her fifth place; Olivia did not feel easy even taking clothes out of the suitcase. Days spent mindlessly typing for an insurance company allowed Olivia plenty of time to worry about her manuscript, imagining it getting lost in the mail, which actually gave her a kind of comfort since no one would then reject it, or having the agent call her and say… Olivia always cut off this fantasy before its climax; she couldn't bear imagining the best when she suspected the worst was inevitable.

Here is what should have happened:
On the same day or at least in the same week, both Emily and Olivia heard from the agents with positive responses: they would represent their work, the manuscripts were going out to several editors at the same time, multiple submissions was the way to go, and so sit tight. Emily worked on a few freelance jobs while Olivia kept up her temp typing assignments and after several more months of waiting and checking in with each other for news, some news, anything, heard again from their agents, within the same week, that their books had been accepted for publication.

Emily was the first to make the call to her friend and was tentative about it because she feared perhaps Olivia's book had been rejected or that Olivia had not heard anything from the agent and Emily knew how nervous and on edge Olivia was apt to be, especially now, living alone in a sublet in a strange part of town, waiting without the distraction of responsibilities, so when Olivia answered the phone in her usual suspicious way, Emily only said: "Any news?" and Olivia hesitated and said, "Well actually…" and Emily screamed, "Me too!" and they each dropped what they were doing – a baby sitter was soon on the way to Emily's house, Olivia's taxi was honking two floors below – and met in a coffee shop on lower Sixth Avenue, which they soon deserted for a neighborhood dive bar where they toasted and toasted and toasted each other's literary futures.

Emily did a quick sketch of them on the back of the menu. "Portrait of the Artists as Young Women," she said.

"Isn't it the best?" Olivia said, staring at the sketch with tears forming in her eyes. "Being a writer, I mean. Isn't it just the best thing in the world to be?"

Each of their books was published and well received by critics who cited the emergence of "a new literary voice, distinctly individual yet fiercely universal" (Emily); and "a thrilling debut of a writer to be watched" (Olivia). Emily's book was optioned by an independent film producer; Olivia received a prize from a university press and a small cash award. Both were offered contracts for a second book. Olivia gladly accepted; Emily hedged at the idea of the pressure a contract would bring but at Olivia's urging, relented. Carla cabled Olivia from Corfu and said she was in love forever and would sign over to Olivia the lease to the apartment. The girls could not have been happier and joyously set out to work on their second books.

Here is what actually happened:
Both agents agreed to represent their work. But when Emily called Olivia to tell her that her book had been bought, Olivia had no matching offer to relate. "Oh it's just a matter of time," Emily said and Olivia agreed and congratulated her friend, though her throat was tight with anger and withheld tears; it was difficult to be happy for Emily at the same time she was so unhappy for herself.

As the weeks then months went by, came a series of "sorry, we love it, but" rejection letters, Olivia gradually stopped expecting a positive response from anyone, though she found she could not suppress a moment of hope whenever she checked the message light on her phone, which was more frequent than she liked to admit. She continued mindlessly typing at the insurance company, dutifully dated and bedded a few reasonably attractive men but never spent the night with any of them. "I'm working on a book," she told the ones who asked. She was doing that certainly; she also felt that any time that was not temping, sleeping, or having sex was time away from her desk. She had a lot of catching up to do; Emily was not the only bright young thing who'd already sold a novel, though to Olivia it sometimes seemed that way.

In the fall, she went to Emily's book publishing party, which was a painful experience for her, so much attention being lavished on Emily, so many photographs being taken, so many people clustered around her, beaming and congratulating her, and she thought of herself as a terrible person for being glad when the newspaper reviews appeared and they were, to quote a grim-voiced Emily when they spoke on the phone later that week, "not wildly enthusiastic."

"At least you have the book," Olivia said. "At least you have something to hold in your hand."

"It's true but…" Emily sighed, so disappointed she did not notice the self-pity in Olivia's tone. "The baby's screaming. I have to go."

They continued to meet for dinners on a regular basis, however, and when the magazine reviews for Emily's book turned out to be raves, Emily felt, as she said to Olivia over drunk chicken at their favorite Thai restaurant, "a hell of a lot better," and Olivia managed to laugh with her. All in all, she really did want the best for her friend.

Now that the positive attention was so firmly back on her and her book, Emily could put down her chopsticks, look Olivia right in the eye, and say: "So what are you working on?"

"Oh I don't know," Olivia said with a shrug. "It's maybe a novel."

"Is it or isn't it?"

"It's a maybe."

"Then: to maybe." Emily lifted a glass of water.

Olivia pressed her glass so hard into the tabletop she feared it would crack in her hand. "It's bad luck to toast with water," she said.

Because of her daughter, Emily occasionally would have to cancel a dinner with Olivia and sometimes would ask Olivia just to come to her apartment, which Olivia knew meant amusing Sally while Emily cooked, or talking to Artie, Emily's husband, a manipulative bully who never revealed anything about himself but only asked provocative questions, which were calculated to make her reveal something heretofore hidden about herself no matter how seemingly non-committal her answer. Once, while Emily was assembling a complicated dessert in the kitchen, Artie said to Olivia:

"So what did you think of it?"

"It?"
        
"Emily's book."

"Oh. Well…I thought it was great."
        
"Great? You mean, great like…uh…James Joyce great?"
        
Olivia laughed. "Well…"
        
"Hey, I'm not impartial, either, so you can…"
        
"Well then," Olivia said, finishing off her second glass of a really not bad at all Merlot, "Not great but…good." As she said it, "good" rang resoundingly rich with implication. "Certainly…very…good."

"But not great."

"Mmm…"

"I'm curious, though," Artie said, edging closer to her on the sofa, seeming to warm to the subject. "You're an old friend of Emily. I mean you've known her for seven or eight years I believe it is, and of course you want to be supportive of her…but I'm wondering…  I think her book is fine. I mean you said ‘not great,' aren't I right about that?"

Olivia's eyes darted to the kitchen door. She would love to have told Artie to shut his stupid mouth but sensed that would have been an overreaction. "Well…yes…"

"Right. And I didn't disagree exactly but I know from experience that the one thing Emily values above all else is to be told the truth about her work. She doesn't like being patronized. I mean she doesn't need to be told she's a great writer just because she published a novel before she was thirty."

"Still..."

"But it's a sticky situation, isn't it? So Olivia, my question is, what do you say to her when you think her work is, well, as you said: not great."

At that moment, Emily re-entered the living room – bringing with her the scent of the lilac infused moisturizer she was rubbing on her hands. She looked, to Olivia, like she was ready to take on all comers. "What's not great?" she asked.

Olivia straightened the pleats on her skirt. Artie poked her shoulder and when she looked at him, winked. "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," he said.

"Oh yes. Joyce. That old hack," Emily said and winked at Olivia. "So over-rated."

Olivia didn't expose Artie for the manipulative monster she thought he was because dinner was about to be served and she was hungry and because it gave her some pleasure to note that if this was what it was like to be married to someone, to have to bear up under a man's jealousy and bad manners just because you'd had his child, well then she was glad to be alone, glad to be free to bed down with whoever she liked only if she liked him and if she didn't, bye bye. Artie was Emily's cross to bear and if she had to write her second novel around his needs and his moods, too bad.

She was vaguely disappointed that Emily did not see what Artie was up to, though Olivia did give her credit for changing the subject. Up until her marriage to Artie she'd never actually experienced Emily as someone not totally in control of the situation but of course her original impression of Emily had been as a writer of fiction in which she actually was in total control of the situation.

In an article in the New York Times a few years later about the long time coming of second novels by writers under 35, Emily was quoted:

"After my husband and I divorced I was left with my daughter to raise alone. [Not for publication was the fact that she finally left Artie when she counted fifty days in a row that he asked her to drop blotter acid with him and she refused and he did it alone.] At first I took all the freelance work I could get but it seemed like a job was really the only thing I could rely on to keep the money coming in. I work and take care of my daughter. And being an editor at a magazine is really very time-consuming."

Thus the explanation Emily would cite for years to come as to the progress on the promised second novel. "Who has time?" she complained to a sympathetic Olivia, still temp typing but gradually amassing an "interesting" – in the words of an editor at a small university press – collection of stories.

Once the disappointment of the reception of her first novel was a few years old, Olivia found she had come to derive pleasure simply in the writing life: the mindless typing during the day, then her mind unleashed in the warm glow of a glass of Merlot at her desk at home, and she allowed herself to gain confidence in the opinion she'd always secretly held, that she was only envious of Emily's having published her book but certainly not of Emily's abilities as a writer. I'm better than she is, Olivia thought, at first guiltily, thinking it was not important to compare herself to Emily, that it was unseemly, small, but in fact it was important; it showed her that there was a place in the world for so-so writing that got published – thus had Olivia's opinion of Emily's descended from "good" – and really really good writing – her own – that did not…yet. She kept this opinion to herself and even this reticence bolstered her confidence; I don't have to tell anyone. I know it. I know it.

This is what happened over the next few years:
Through a cousin by marriage, Emily met a recent Russian émigré, Serge, handsome and sweet-natured, willing to assume step-fatherhood to Sally, his only lack, confessed Emily to Olivia, a full, that is, colloquial command of English. Olivia liked him but never quite understood Emily's choice, her being a writer and him not reading her work; the irony of it was a bit leaden. At around the same time, Olivia began living with a Teddy, lead singer in a garage band, also handsome, though not as articulate as she might have preferred, also who never read any of her work.

So there Olivia and Emily sat, side by side in a leatherette booth, in a café on a side street off Thompkins Square Park, drunk and drinking, ruefully lamenting, but only affectionately, that unsubtle, irony-proof irony of their choices in mates because though both the Russian and the singer could read, they could not respond in any meaningful way, so what was the point?

We are writers of fiction, they declared. No matter where one or the other of them lived – it was as often a short taxi ride away as it was a forty-five minute commuter train ride – they never missed their monthly dinners. And as time went on, they found themselves talking about other things as well, subjects that, as young and ambitious writers of fiction, had never interested them particularly and hence had always taken a back seat; it was what "girls" talked about: clothes, men, makeup, weight. Serge, who had made a decade-long trek from the Ukraine with stops in Rome, London and Las Vegas, had work-related issues, and so Emily was long the careerist and hence the breadwinner; Teddy relied on out of town gigs that often wound up paying only for travel, motels, junk food, and grass, so Olivia took care of the rent and stocked the fridge at home. "Poor us," the women joked; both were in love.

Writing, the act of it, was now rarely a subject of conversation. Olivia often did not tell Emily that a story of hers was appearing in some magazine or other, and Emily's only writing, apparently, was journalistic; in addition to her editorship, she was now a "name" in women's magazines and commanded $3 a word when she wrote a think piece about mammograms for Vogue. It had been years since she had accepted the advance on her unwritten second novel.

And then:
Out of the blue, in the back garden of a bistro around the corner from her new condominium, after two blue margaritas each, and after each one told the other how great she looked, how they hadn't changed at all, and insisted when the other denied it, Emily said: "I've written a novel."

Olivia's glass halted midway to her lower lip. "What? You have? But…?"

"I get up at five," Emily said, smoothing the napkin in her lap. "I write for two hours, then go to work. I'm very methodical because I can't write on the weekends, obviously. With Serge and now Sally done with school and not working…  It's been…well, you know.  I was determined. It's seven hundred pages long!"

"Oh my god!"

"I know!"

"How long have you been doing this?" Olivia asked.

"Three years."

"You never said a word to me!"

"Oh now you're going to be mad."

"No! Of course not. Just…"

Emily shrugged. "I didn't want to talk about it, really. I just felt I was on a roll and just…kept going."

"Wow," Olivia said. "Wow." She thought she ought to be a little hurt that Emily had kept this from her for three years, but found she wasn't really.  After all, she had made a similar decision not to keep Emily up to date on her own publications on the assumption that Emily didn't want to be reminded of the fact that she was not writing fiction any longer, and here she had been writing a seven-hundred-page novel!

As Emily very basically related it, her novel was a science fiction/new age hybrid that followed two couples from 1950 to 2050.  "I can't wait to read it," Olivia said though this was not exactly true; in fact, she dreaded it. And when it arrived in the mail a few weeks later, its very weight seemed to Olivia a bad omen. And when she finally opened the loose leaf notebook in which Emily had sent it – seven hundred and sixty-two pages and she would have to read every word! – Olivia knew, almost from the first paragraph, that she was not going to like it, and worse, that it was not very good, and worse than that, as she read on and on, that it was not good at all, and as she crested the halfway point that it was, in fact, bad, poor, annoying, and, oh dear oh dear, she was going to have to talk to Emily about it and soon.  

Here's what should have happened next:
"It is so interesting," Olivia began.

"Really?"

"Yes!"

But Olivia felt ethically bound to tell Emily the truth, or at least some version of it, and so here's what actually happened:
The café on a side street off Sheridan Square where they used to drink was now a Mexican take-out and since Olivia was there first and had already ordered a coke by the time Emily arrived, they stayed and shared a taco, sitting side by side at a counter by the window, staring out at the street and marveling at how the city had changed. But not each other, both insisted. And now that all the chat was over and done with, now that everything was settled, they vowed to stay in closer touch. "Tell me," Emily said. "I'm dying to know what you think."

Olivia's hands rested on top of the manuscript.  She tapped one finger on it. "What stage of the writing is this?" she asked. "I mean, rough first draft or…"

"Let's not play editor, Olivia," Emily said. "Just tell me what you think. The brutal truth." She said this last with a conspiratorial grin that suggested she was expecting only extravagant praise.

Olivia hesitated, searching her brain for a harmless, non-committal opening. "The title," she said. "Love the title."

Emily squirmed with pleasure. "Have to have a good title."

Olivia couldn't bear the smug anticipation on Emily's face. She envisioned the road ahead strewn with false compliments and thought she might as well make the cut quickly. "I don't think the book works."

Emily sat up straight. Her face was hard. "Why not?"

Olivia expected Emily to say that and found herself getting angry when Emily did. "I just don't think it works the way it is."

At this question, Olivia realized all avenues of escape had closed. She would have to say it and took solace only in the fact that she knew her analysis was correct. "You know, I always looked to you to be so smart about the ups and downs and trends of politics and society. But the writing and thinking in your novel are just not up to what I know you're capable of.  Also, and I know this is petty, but there are a lot of spelling errors – doesn't your computer have spell check? – misuses of words and grammatical inconsistencies. I mean, it shows such a lack of attention to detail that I actually felt insulted. As an editor yourself, I think you understand what I mean. I know that you're an incredibly hard worker but I also know that writing a novel is an incredibly hard and time intensive job. For most people it takes literally years of working long hours every day. I just don't feel the kind of book you set out to write is something you can accomplish very easily when you also have a full-time job. And not just a full-time job but a full-time important job with national visibility and incredible responsibilities as well as a husband and a large extended family. I think that you have been both ambitious and also immodest in thinking you could accomplish a novel of such scope as the one you've undertaken to write while giving the major share of your attention to all the other things going on in your life. This is not to say that you won't triumph with this novel, just that you have not triumphed with it yet."

Emily's lips were trembling. "You hate it."

"Will you just listen to yourself! You've got everything! You've got a great job, you make tv appearances, you're well known, you've got a handsome husband who loves you and a daughter and a house. How dare you think you can write a 700-page novel too! And what do I have? I have no career. I'm forty years old and I'm still a temp typist. I have a boyfriend who plays in a garage band and doesn't want children. I gave up everything to be a writer. Everything. And you gave up nothing. You wanted all these other things, clothes and cars and a co-op in the city. You gave up nothing. And you expect me to praise this work that you couldn't even bother to check for spelling errors!" She blew her nose in the napkin and threw it down on the table. She felt as raw as a skinned peach.

In the heat of Olivia's tirade, Emily had composed herself. "This is not how friends behave," she said. She stood up, fished a few bills from her purse and placed them on the table. How had she been so mistaken about what was important? Olivia, breathing hard, thought pretty much the same thing.

Olivia found that maintaining an apartment in the city while she really lived in the country was not only draining on her and Teddy's unstable financial situation – one year his solo CD went platinum, the next two years the tour bookings dried up – but while he was away she tended never to go into the city and still had to write those monthly rent checks, so both agreed to let the lease expire. She found she liked the small town where they'd bought a house, had even done a reading from her new novel at the local library, and agreed to be on their Board.

Emily set her novel aside for a while in order get a fresh perspective. Her job required more and more that she make personal appearances at national conferences at which her point of view – actually her magazine's point of view – was guaranteed a favored spot on the agenda. Serge didn't mind her absences; she'd bought him a Porsche.

A few years later, on a fresh autumn Tuesday, each was in town for a doctor's appointment and to do some shopping. Each was carrying bags of things they'd bought. Each had descended into the subway, one to go up, the other downtown.

Here's how their story might have ended:
Emily was stunned to spot Olivia on the opposite platform, and found herself unable to speak but just as suddenly in motion, dropping her bags and running to the steps to cross the subway tracks. Up the steps she ran, her hand on her chest, feeling her pounding heart, only to find herself emerging into the light and seeing that in order to get to the platform where Olivia stood, she would have to cross the street and re-enter the subway going uptown, which she did, beating out the light that had just turned red. As she ran down the steps to the subway platform, searching in her pocket for her metrocard, she could hear the train rumbling into the station. She took the steps two at a time, forgetting for the moment why she was doing what she was doing, and only when she reached the platform just as the train was roaring to a stop, did she see Olivia. The train stopped, the doors opened, Emily screamed Olivia's name. Olivia was half inside the car when she turned and looked to where her name had been shouted. She saw Emily then, her old friend Emily, her oldest friend who she had not seen or spoken to in years and was flooded with feelings of joy. She took a giant step back, off the train and ran towards Emily. Some friendships never die, they said to each other ten minutes later over cokes in the little café that had once been a Mexican restaurant that had once been a Thai restaurant that had once been where they met to talk about their lives as writers.

Here is what actually happened:
Emily was stunned to spot Olivia on the opposite platform and in her moment of indecision as to what to do Olivia's train roared into the station. She blinked hard, as if what she saw was a thought rather than a sight, then saw that indeed, yes, it was Olivia. She sighed. Her shoulders slumped. I don't care, she thought and sat back down on the bench.

Across the platform, Olivia got on the train and sat down and when she looked up saw a woman on the opposite platform who looked vaguely familiar. Olivia felt something leap in her chest and got up from her seat, just as a man with a guitar and very long greasy hair appeared from the adjoining car.

It was Emily! Yes, that woman looked just like Emily. I haven't thought of her… Oh, I should call her. She laughed to herself, imagining the surprise on the other end of the line when Emily heard her voice. I will, I'll call her. And then she realized that she no longer had a telephone number for Emily and wondered how she would reach her and that maybe it was not Emily at all that she'd seen.

The man with the guitar started strumming a tune that her husband's band often did, and she rummaged through her purse to find a dollar to give him, and having done so, started consciously listening to the way he sang this familiar song, and forgot all about whatever it was she had been thinking only a moment before.

 
 

 

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