39. Sunday Seminar - A Special Guest
Professor John Edwardes is continuing Ali's Sunday Seminars at 1 PM.
Today, the gang's all here in the Sociology conference room around the long, oval, mahogany table. At far end, facing the door, in formal black suit with white shirt and brown tie, Profeesor Edwardes stands, his square edge-of-mouth mustache trimmed and his center-parted hair combed straight back.
Seated on his left are Brenda in blue dress with white trim pockets over small high breasts, then Stan in white hospital doctor jacket, and then Joe in usual white tank-top shirt and workman's paint-stained pants over trim athletic body. To Edwardes's right is Sam, the light-skin super's helper, also a trim body but in gray flannel shirt and Levi pants; on his right Nicola over from Luigi's, still in white chef's garb; and furthest down table are Sheila in nurse's white dress & cap and next Irving Goldberg in button-up white intern shirt and white pants.
The chair at opposite end, back to the door is empty.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Sunday seminar. Today is Creative Writing. Many writers think they are creative when they are merely imitative. They don't create characters they describe persons they know. ..."
The door opens and a man enters.
Edwardes exclaims "Jerry!" Turning to the seated seminarans, "Allow me to introduce our Writer in Residence, Jerome D. Salinger."
Salinger sits. "I'm here at John's request to hear you, not myself"
A sound of running steps outside, stopping near the door. Eddie enters. He is in blue sweater and neat brown pants with Oxford black shoes. He looks unsure.
"Edward! Sit by the door there." Edwardes had recommended Eddie to attend Seminar. This is his first.
Joe starts: "I ain't a writer; I paint." He laughs. "And not just inside walls of houses. To me, Creative is imagining people and things I never seen before. I don' like portraits or still life; we got cameras now to do them better. I agree with the Professor."
Nicola speaks. "Yeah I'ma unnerstan'. Creative a fine woid. In my woik, itsa make-a food lika no one elsa make-a."
Stan takes a turn. "For me, it's doing psychoanalysis in a new way, not copying Freud's way."
Irving, who has just been up to Canada 6 weeks under the great neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, says, "Creative is Wilder Penfield's neurosurgical research - mapping the surface of living brain by electrical stimulation and response. No one ever thought of that before Penfield. And it's made a breakthrough in understanding consciousness. It's new."
Brenda is next. "Creative for me is thinking new relationships - not what we have now - you know, like boy and girl, mom and dad. Those are twosomes. I'm thinking threesomes." She stops, embarrassed.
Sam speaks up, jokingly thinking, How come we people of color are always last, before saying, "Creative? Change the white man's way we got now. Create a colorless, classless society. That's creative!"
Professor Edwardes, who has sat down, comments:"Creative Writing is our title but I am happy you all zeroed in on the Creative. That's creative! Not following the expected line - not copying ideas - moving out for one's self." He gestures expressively. "Look! We are each of us in our ruts - you know the deep grooves each life follows because that's how it has always been done. Creative is getting out of the grooves - thinking the new, maybe the impossible - and putting it into action - on paper as a writer, on a canvas as a painter, in a new pizza if a pasta chef, in the operating room as a neurosurgical researcher, and on a couch (laughs) if a psychoanalyst. It can be as important as that mysterious Mona Lisa curve of the lips by Leonardo or as trivial as me yesterday after walking past this shortcut in the road to the college I'd walked past for a year and, suddenly, realizing -Hey! That shortcut's a new way! Will save me 10 minutes a day and save my energy and maybe my life - and breaking out of my rut for that shortcut. He pauses then "OK, Jerry, take it."
Salinger remaining seated says, "I think I got a Satori just now - a Zen Buddhist moment listening to all of these creatives. More intelligent and intelligible than most writers and painters I know."
Everyone looks in surprise towards Eddie's interrupting voice, "Gee, Mr Salinger, I just read your short story in The New Yorker. I wanna be a writer like you. I wanna be famous and make money just using a typewriter. What'sa best way?"
Salinger turns to Eddie who is sitting on his left. "I understand your desires, kid. I got them at your age reading Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. I thought What a deal! All I have to do is write words and I'll make a lot of money, live in luxury with everyone admiring me as they admire Hem, and never have to really work. So here I am." His voice goes downbeat "a goddamn parasite." His emotion transmits a jolt. "We call ourselves artists? Creative writing? Nothing but tricks! And to get before the public we worm our way into the friendship of editors and publishers and literary agents and critics. Look, kid; there is nothing dishonorable about wanting to be a writer because you want to teach or to make feelings of wonder in others. But it should be a hobby, an activity of leisure not a profession." He turns to Nicola. "The Italian gentleman here who is obviously some sort of chef is more creative, more an artist than I." And to Joe."And you, Mr. Painter - your painting is not something to apologize for." And to Stan "And you Mr psychoanalyst, you do more for the world with your new approach than a thousand Me's." And to Brenda - "Wow! A threesome! That is creative! Good luck to you three."
To Eddie: "Get educated, produce something of value, and do not get involved in the business of being a writer."
A brief break: tea, coffee and small cakes are bought to table.
Later, Salinger takes questions
Professor Edwardes opens. "Jerry I gather from your comment you favor amateur writing?"
"Yes - that is a good word for it. Writing is ruined by commercialism - a person writing because he needs, desires or falls for the offer of money. And lest you confuse my amateur with inexperience or incompetence allow me to point to Mr. A. Conan-Doyle referring to his Sherlock Holmes as amateur detective in A Study in Scarlet. By the way, money has many substitutes - glory, fame, the casting couch ..."
Sam, practical minded and acutely aware of a need to support wife and family, raises right hand. "Mr. Salinger, are you saying people shouldn't make a living writing?"
"Good question, sir. In my excitement talking about creative writing, it sounded, I think, like no place for men or women with a talent to amuse or interest in print, who make a living from it, and no place for commercial fiction. Excuse me on that. I respect the journeyman writer - not only his making a living but his ability to create what we are calling art. I was advising the kid here and kids like I was who get carried away by the glory and money part. Whether you write for money or love of what you write - when you get down in the pit, you got to spit on its commercial side - that bitch goddess - and follow your true genie and write up your storm."
A momentary quiet. Sheila at the word genie feels her heart skip. She thinks: I am that for Irving.
Joe, the only actual artist of the seminarans raises his hand. "Mr Salinger. What are your thoughts about producing a work of art, a masterpiece?"
Salinger, who has been rather serious breaks out in an ironic smile and says, Your question brings to mind Monkey at the typewriter.
Edwardes inserts himself: "Jerry, as the Professor here, allow me. The Monkey at Typewriter idea - I don't know where it originated - is based on probability and time. It pictures a rather smart monkey at a typewriter hitting keys at random for an unlimited time period that might approach eternity. The monkey must be rather long lived. Of course the idea is a metaphor for a robot run by a computing machine that selects letters of the alphabet at random for finger strike and it all gets printed almost until time has an end. Probabilistically, this idea states that eventually, given a near infinity of time, such a monkey at the machine would independently reproduce the works of Shakespeare and other great writing. Forgetting about the reality of the metaphor, its point is useful. Given a little writing ability and ideas, a not particularly talented 2-finger typist, if he writes enough and is assumed to gradually improve his ability and enlarge his ideas in a lifetime may produce something of value, perhaps even a masterpiece of creative writing." He pauses for breath. "Well I've said a lungful. Jerry?"
"John, you saved me an hour of prefacing. I use monkey at typewriter to help my daily writing. Instead of being inhibited by constantly feeling the pressure of one's imagined readers or potential buyers of one's story who one imagines saying in one's ear "Too uninteresting, too banal, too boring, too much wasting our time," I think: Monkey at typewriter - that's me! The more I write the better my chance to write something of value. We are all metaphoric monkeys. That's all I have to say."
"And that is enough for today," says Professor Edwardes standing. "Nicola here has exercised his art by producing the most creative, tasty pizza pie I have ever sniffed and it is next door in my office with cokes. Thanks to you all."
For next, click 13.40 Eddie Gets Interviewed
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