Private Lies Read Online Free PDF

growing conviction that
he was being urged on by some inner force, some mysterious and compelling need
to become a writer, a teller of stories.
    "He always loved to make up stories," his mother
had told anyone within earshot, as if, for her, his writing career had always
been a foregone conclusion. From earliest childhood the use of words had
fascinated him. He had also been an early talker, reader, and compulsive
frequenter of the public library.
    As early as elementary school he had shown signs of
literary talent, winning a poetry prize in the seventh grade. Later he became
editor of the high school paper and literary magazine. And it was always Ken
Kramer who was called upon to write the class satire or a speech for his
favored candidate running for the student council. Weren't these activities the
foreshadowing of his future?
    "This is a very talented boy," his mother had
been told again and again when she appeared on open-school days.
    The writing gift also had a profoundly positive effect on
his popularity with his classmates and friends, especially when puberty arrived
and he could write good rhyming love poetry to the girls. His friends had
concluded that this was the true reason why he was the first of their crowd to
go all the way sexually with a female. He had just turned fifteen.
    Such early successes had made the idea of a brilliant
literary career a natural progression and, therefore, prophetic. From that conviction
flowed the decision to major in English at City College, much to the chagrin of
his unemployed and expendable bookkeeper father, who, by then, was plagued by a
certain fear that his son would emulate his own failure.
    On the other hand, although she had never gone to college,
his mother had always read voraciously and encouraged him in his pursuit. His
father, true to his fears, would have preferred that his son, at the minimum,
become a CPA like his sister's husband.
    "Writing is not a career that you pick," his
mother had repeatedly explained to his father. "It picks you." The
explanation invariably confused the poor, beaten man, whose experience had
convinced him that becoming a professional man was the ultimate ticket to
financial security. Logic, after all, was on his side.
    But Ken reveled in his mother's explanation and agreed with
it. How else to explain the thrill of being transported beyond himself when he
read the stories of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, F.
Scott Fitzgerald, and others? It was as if these writers were pulling him into
their circle.
    Yet even then, he recognized a dark side to his mother's
militant support of his grandiose ambitions. His father, although a sweet,
gentle man, had no obvious creative impulses, no compelling drives. It showed,
of course, in the modesty of his income and in the simple adequacy of creature
comforts in the household.
    The background music of Ken's early life was his mother's
perpetual drumbeat of disappointment over the man's failure. There was no other
word for it.
    "How can you be satisfied with being nobody, taking
crumbs," his mother would rant. "Where is your pride? Is this kind of
failure a good example for your children?"
    "I do my best," his father would say, or some
variation of the same theme. "I didn't have the opportunities."
    "You didn't take them," his mother would counter.
    "He gets a free education," his father would
reason. "He could be a professional man. Look at me. I'm an example of
what happens when you're not a professional man."
    "A writer is a professional man," his mother
would point out.
    "No. A writer is a gambler. He could do it on the
side. First he should be a breadwinner."
    "Like you, I suppose."
    "That's the whole point."
    "You don't understand. You're born an artist. You have
no choice. He's not like you. You have to be dedicated. You can't do it on the
side. It takes every ounce of his being."
    Every ounce of his being. Of course. She had it right as
far as it went. But experience would