I JUST SNUCK AWAY from Jose’s room. He’s giving a sort of coming-out party for Rita-Barbara, nun-tootsie, which I’ve decided to contract to nutsie. The place is loaded, it’s like a submarine running out of oxygen. I never suspected Jose had so many friends, all sorts, smoothies, strays, unescorted wildly handsome chicks, Harvey stoned—most of them, as far as I can gather, with literary connections. But the hit is the nutsie, everyone is attracted to her nun-tootsiness. She reminds me of a layer of white paint on black. From an angle the surface looks white. Straight on, you can see black underneath. She’s a miracle of happy happenstance, nun’s short hair becomes a chic bob, her lack of makeup is voguish, simplicity of dress high style, shyness and silence wise amusement. I saw more than one big-city boyo, drink and cigarette in hand, sizing her up from the corner, thinking his answer might lie on the thigh of this mysterious little pussycat. And it might too. She must have a perfect body, there is a fineness about the tendons of her ankles and a subtle firm swell in the little forearms that speaks an exquisite combination of soft and hard. A fag in there told me that he’d like to hollow her out to make a candybox. Her head no one seems to know for sure, not even Jose, who is smit but mystified. He says that she is willing to marry him, but must first get a release from her vows, which I gather is possible since they weren’t final. Anyway, that’s not what I came away to say. I met a tall classy jane in there named Peggy, who said that Jose had told her I was a writer. She’s an editor, and what kind of writer am I? A novelist, I said boldly. Well, one thing led to another, and I have promised to deliver the manuscript of my first book to her in two weeks. My idea at the moment was to sit down once again and push Austin to his final reward. But I can’t do that. I’ve had Austin, Austin me. So here’s my idea. If you’ve kept my letters, send them back, I’ll retype them and claim they make ah epistolary novel. Sounds great, doesn’t it, epistolary novel. And why not? Even if it’s dull, no one will be able to deny it’s a characterization of a guy writing letters. Hey, I’ve got another idea. Suppose I leave everyone’s name in. The publisher will be smothered with lawsuits. I’m judgment proof, being nearly broke, but the publisher is probably loaded. Everybody can sue. Fox, Mrs. Fox, Rita maybe, Jose. I’ll have stolen his Very Tales. He can sue like crazy. Harvey, Feldshuh. Prudence could sue. If I put the chambermaiden’s last name in, she can sue. That would be great. It’s Ermina Flagello, resident of Bardolino. Who else? Dr. Curtin. You could sue, I guess. I tell you what, if you want to sue, leave in all the stuff about yourself. If not, cross it out. Wally can sue. Christ, here’s another idea. After everybody collects from the publisher, we take the money—I expect you all to support me as the source of these goodies—and we form an ideal community at Montauk Point or New Hope or Bardolino or somewhere. I think I’ll change Mrs. Frank’s name. I couldn’t stand her kid. No, I’ll leave it in, it’s only fair, but we won’t invite her. Hey, I think I’ll include this letter, send this letter back with the others, it will put the publisher off his guard. What do you think, do you think I can get away with it? I don’t mean the lawsuits, I mean passing the letters off as a novel. I can see the reviews. If it bores my readers to hear me inveigh at least once a fortnight against the tawdry, the inept and the sensational in current fiction, I must explain that it bores me no less. It bores, bores, bores me. Someone, however, must speak the truth about the trash that is foisted on the public today in the name of literature. This is a small volume, described by its publishers as a novel. I have always understood a novel to be a narrative fiction of a certain length with beginning, middle and end. This book, however, has neither beginning, middle nor end, except in terms of pages that precede or follow other pages. Purporting to be a series of letters from one young man to another during the summer and early fall following their graduation from college, it is no more than hastily written and often foul anecdotes intermixed with vague and pretentious observations about life. I gather the author intended these letters to recount the passage of his hero from adolescence to a manhood of sorts. If they had been meant to convey a picture of a mixed-up American youngster, I would say they had some merit, but nowhere is there the slightest indication that the narrator’s attitudes differ from the author’s. In fact, I suspect that this is largely an autobiographical book, thrown together from real letters the author wrote to a real friend. How else explain the book’s inordinately-abrupt and unpleasant jerkiness, or its accordion quality, which would seem to allow it to be half as long as it is as well as twice as long? Nonetheless, the book interests me, not as a created thing, but as a phenomenon, as a piece of evidence which shows what the lack of spiritual values and aesthetic tradition can and is doing to many young Americans. If the hero or author of this book were my son I would take him aside and explain to him that if he wants to interpret the contemporary American experience to his fellow man—as I rather believe this hero and author both want to do—he must first form a useful and consistent attitude toward life and second develop a means of communicating it. I would suggest that he find out who he is and what he wants, that he work out a sense of personal values, and then that he read or reread the great contemporary masters of the novelistic statement, Marquand, Cozzens, Snow. Only in this way will he deserve our attention, and only in this way will he get it. Instead he has gathered together an assemblage of tasteless and exhibitionistic oddments, some of which seem intended to titillate and others to shock. The excesses of the sexual descriptions and the gratuitous use of four-letter words, peculiarly enough, are not the most offensive ingredients of this generally offensive book. Most offensive are the frequent and irrelevant slurs on religious and national groups. Protestants, Jews, and especially Catholics are frequently insulted, as are Italians, Negroes, Irish, Germans and Americans. There is even, in the last section of the book, a harsh mock review of the book itself, intended, I imagine, to disarm criticism. Well, it fails entirely. Many is the book reviewer, I suspect, who, like myself, will see in it his own distaste articulated. In fact, I am now quoting, word for word, from the same mock review. You know, one thing is worrying me—me me, that is—I really ought to tie up all the loose ends. Take Austin. Suppose I send him one night walking along the shore near his parents’ bungalow. He’s become a wild animal almost, and suppose he sees a beach party in progress, people his own age having a good time. He’s been considering swimming out into the ocean to drown himself, but the sight of all this youth and gaiety attracts him. The youngsters are playing a game, they have blankets over their heads and are stumbling around trying to catch and identify one another. Austin puts himself in the way of a girl who has wandered from the group. She takes hold of him through the blanket but can’t guess who he is, even though they talk. Austin feels this is the first human contact he has made in his whole life. Finally the girl throws the blanket off and, of course, sees nothing. She thinks he has run into the night. Actually he is standing beside her, watching her beautiful face just barely lit by the distant fire. He leaves her, however, walks along the beach, and hours later, as dawn comes up, finds his floggis washed in with the sea shells, eats it and becomes opaque again. In his nakedness he runs back to his house and now is determined to seek out the girl from the beach party. I thought up this ending some time ago and tried it out on Jose. He said it was fine. If a writer wants to end a novel happily, he said, he shouldn’t solve the hero’s problems—that would be unrealistic—he should merely indicate hope. OK, that’s done. Now how about me? Well, let’s see, if you’ve kept the letters and if the publisher buys them, I’ll marry Mary. For me she’s better than Prudence. She knows I’m faulted. Not as an individual, but out of principle. She understands that I’m a victim, like herself, of original sin. There won’t be any disillusionment over coffee one morning. And if we have trouble, I can always write those nasty little marital stories you see around. Jose? Jose will marry his nun in a civil ceremony, but years and years pass before she can obtain release from her vows, during which time they live together-apart. Material for his greatest Very Tale. Harvey? Harvey I don’t know. O let’s say he does marry Mrs. Fox and they make it. Things have to work out for somebody.