The Great American Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

curse and thunder when I know that writing the Great American Novel requires every last ounce of my strength and my cunning? Tell me something (I am addressing only men of principle) : What would you have done?
    Here’s what happened: Commissioner Kuhn appeared, and when reporters, photographers, and cameramen (plus geezers) gathered round to hear his words of wisdom, know what he said? No, not what this sentimental, decomposing, worn-out wishful thinker was pleading with his eyes for Kuhn to say—no, not that the BBWAA was a cheat and a fraud and disgrace for having failed to announce the vote submitted for Luke Gofannon of the extinguished Patriot League. Oh no—wrongs aren’t righted that way, fans, except in dreams and daytime serials. “The fact that nobody was elected,” said the Commissioner, “points up the integrity of the institution.” And if you don’t believe me because I’m considered cracked, it’s on TV film for all to see. Just look at your newspaper for January 22, 1971—before they destroy that too. The integrity of the institution. Next they will be talking about the magnanimity of the Mafia and the blessing of the Bomb. They will use alliteration for anything these days, but most of all for lies.
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    After fighting a sail for forty-five minutes off the Florida coast and finally bringing it in close enough for the fifteen-year-old Cuban kid who was our mate to grab the bill with his gloved hands, pull it in over the rail, and send it off to sailfish heaven with the business end of a sawed-off Hillerich and Bradsby signed “Luke Gofannon,” my old friend (and enemy) Ernest Hemingway said to me—the year is 1936, the month is March—“Frederico”—that was the hard-boiled way Hem had of showing his affection, calling me by a name that wasn’t my own—“Frederico, you know the son of a bitch who is going to write the Great American Novel?”
    â€œNo, Hem. Who?”
    â€œYou.”
    They were running the white pennant up now, number five for Papa in four hours. This was the first morning the boats had been out for a week, and from the look of things everybody was having a good day, though nobody was having as good a day as Papa. When he was having a good day they didn’t make them any more generous or sweet-tempered, but when he was having a bad day, well, he could be the biggest prick in all of literature. “You’re the biggest prick in all of literature,” I remember telling him one morning when we were looking down into the fire pit of Halemaumau, Hawaii’s smoldering volcano. “I ought to give you to the goddess for that one,” said Hem, pointing into the cauldron. “That wouldn’t make you any less of a prick, Hem,” I said. “Lay off my prick, Frederico.” “I call ’em like I see ’em, Papa.” “Just lay off my prick,” he said.
    But that day in March of ’36, our cruiser flying five white pennants, one for each sail Hem had landed, and Hem watching with pleasure the mullet dragging on his line, waiting for number six, it seemed you could have said anything in the world you wanted to Papa about his prick, and he would have got a kick out of it. That’s what it’s like when a great writer is having a good day.
    It had squalled for a week in Florida. The managers were bawling to the Chamber of Commerce that next year they would train in the Southwest and the players were growing fat on beer and lean on poker and the wives were complaining because they would go North without a sunburn and at night it got so cold that year that I slept in my famous hound’s-tooth raglan-sleeve overcoat, the one they called “a Smitty” in the twenties, after a fella name a’, I believe. My slit was a waitress at a Clearwater hotel with a degree in Literatoor from Vassar. All the waitresses that year had