Algren at Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

Norman Manlifellow he was challenging.
    â€œLean white boy meets lean black boy!” Norman replied.
    I looked around to see if I was hearing right, as the better word for Giovanni would be “puny,” and Norman’s physique is closer to Buddy Hackett’s than to that of a jaguar.
    But Giovanni, tossing his fez to one side, balanced himself like a ballet dancer, strangely upon one leg; and Norman executed a similar posture with equivalent grace.
    I was about to witness the first arabesque Indian-wrestling contest in the history of American letters!

    â€œIs this for the black or the white supremacist title?” I inquired eagerly, hoping to get a bet down.
    Ginny sat up and boggled about. “Liberace can whip you both!” she announced, and sank back upon the divan.
    Norman, apparently discouraged by this comment, broke the contest off. “I’m a writer, not a performer,” he explained with disdain of attention-getting devices, and thereupon stood on his head; revealing, as his trousers slipped to his knees, that one of his socks bore the legend “Look at me!” and the other the plea “Keep Looking!”
    Actually, I believe his withdrawal from the contest was provoked by an unwritten ethical law among New York writers never to run for public office against one another. Except, of course, for the Presidency of American Writers.
    At this point he resumed an upright position and began jumping up and down with drinks in both hands, shouting, “I’m getting mine! Getting mine!” As he was already wet from previous drinks I didn’t see the need of spilling more on himself.
    Giovanni, left in the ballet dancer’s attitude, got tired of holding it. He got back on tippytoe and tippytoed right up to me.
    â€œYou look like you’re from nowhere,” he informed me. “Are you really from somewhere?”
    â€œChicago.” I had to admit it.
    â€œDo you realize you are responsible for the race riots of 1917?” he informed me, placing his forefinger on the tip of my nose.
    â€œI was eight years old at the time.” I tried wriggling out of the accusation.
    â€œYou are an honorable, well-meaning white square,” he informed me; emphasizing his point by tapping my nose lightly.
    â€œYes, sir.”
    What else could I say with my eyes crossed? I didn’t ask him to take the finger off as I knew this would be to deprive him of personal dignity.
    â€œIn short,” he summed the situation up crisply, “you flatly deny that Negroes are lynched, jailed, cheated, corrupted, flogged, degraded, debauched, deprived, dehumanized, alienated, isolated, disaffected, locked in, locked out, smoked in, smoked out, outcast, outlawed, knocked down, strung up, run over, banjaxed, castrated, jillflirted, stomped, harassed, jeered at, vilified, despised, warped”—he paused to change fingers, as he tires easily—“pulled apart, soldered, molded, transfixed, invaded, pursued,
abandoned, orphaned, aborted, disemboweled, and are last to be hired and first to be fired?”
    â€œI know you pay higher rents.” I gave an inch.
    â€œAnd you call yourself a Christian?”
    â€œI can’t call myself a Christian. I’m not ready for the responsibility.”
    â€œAh! You take no responsibility. I could tell that by looking at you.”
    I broke.
    â€œI was the kid who put the ten thousand dollars under Eddie Cicotte’s pillow,” I made a clean breast of everything, “later I burned down the Reichstag. What can I do, just short of killing myself, to atone to the human race?”
    Giovanni relented. He removed his fingertip from my nose tip. I was grateful. A new resolve filled me. My eyes were wet as I grasped his hand.
    â€œLet me join you and Norman in your struggle against the established order,” I begged him for a chance to strike a blow against oppression. “Let me hail squad cars and pretend I