Wednesday, May 10, 2006
The Literary Advisor
Here's a story I wrote in 1978, when I was in twelfth grade. It was not a school assignment. I felt like writing it. I have taken it from a carbon copy because I can't find the original. I've put brackets around a line I may or may not have omitted from the final draft. (Carbon doesn't erase easily.) I've retained my poor spelling and punctuation. I've recently written an explanatory note. It appears below the story, after three asterisks.
The Literary Advisor
by Fred Wemyss
There was a very gigantic room with rows of desks throughout, which made room for only small crawlspaces, through which the Literary Advisor walked. Seemingly, the room teemed with writers scrawling or typing away, all ambitious to satisfy the Advisor Helmsley.
He was their idol. The image of the lonely observer, he was; noting every one of their moves and helping them. When he held up his nose and snorted it looked like a lack of hope; but not like disdain.
A writer in that room would write endlessly; hoping to perfect his work; feeling fearful and inferior. All the writers wanted to gratify Helmsley.
Helmsley walked along playfully; gliding. He saw one girl's work and said suddenly and very loud, "Your use of the phrase here 'blue patching' has," and he paused and raised his head, "texture."
The girl had trouble concentrating for the first few minutes after his flattering her, but her rigorous training helped her to a high level of concentration when she started work again.
At a point much farther down the room, Advisor Helmsley was standing and holding a writer's paper up closely to see. The man sat patiently with his hands folded, contentedly awaiting Mr. Helmsley's dramatic reading.
"People." Everyone looked up. "Please; pens and pencils down. Typewriters locked." The Advisor was holding the paper very carefully. Helmsley read:
"Spider walked along the balcony. Lavinia was on the rug on the lower level. Spider smelled the bouquet Lavinia held; and he flew off the balcony, and lowered himself on his string into that bouquet. Lavinia usually noticed things like..."
Helmsley smiled. "This is marvelous."
After the writers finished swooning, Mr. Helmsley gave advice quietly to individual writers; often advice on how to space lines and cross-out and improve.
The writers happily wrote away, in the usual line of things.
Helmsley picked up Bark's paper and saw the words, in quotation marks, "Spokane--The Town That Refreshes."
" 'Spokane. The Town That Refreshes?' Mr. Bark, I do hope you can continue with this." Bark was a literary genius. He had impressed his overlings all his life, and didn't have to practice. He had a literary authority which awed his peers and truly inspired Advisors. He didn't write anymore, though.
Helmsley said, "Please, read us this week's writings, Mr. Bark."
Bark took out a thick folder labeled with his name in heavy magic marker.
Helmsley was looking around the room smiling, with delighted eyes.
Everyone watched.
Bark pulled out his sheaf. He removed the top sheet and put it on the bottom. He took the new top sheet and put that on the bottom. Both of them were blank. Bark took a third sheet and placed it on a space on his desk, and plopped the stack onto it.
Mr. Helmsley had a disappointed, sorrowful expression on his face.
Bark took another top sheet and, lifting the stack, lightly put it underneath. He started flipping the sides of the stack.
He did this with a calm "I can't do anything about this either" expression.
"Do you--?" asked Helmsley.
But Bark started talking at the same moment. He was holding the paper with the one line he wrote that day. He read: " 'Spokane--The Town That Refreshes.' "
The writers were silent. [Mr. Helmsley asked Bark if that was all he had written. When Bark said it was,] Helmsley started to walk away, saying, "Well...", since he couldn't cope with any writer's downfall.
But, as he walked away, Bark stuck out his foot, sending Helmsley tripping. The genius Bark said, "Oh...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trip you."
Advisor Helmsley smiled a bit and said, dusting off his pants, "Oh, it's alright."
Bark returned to his work--which consisted of thinking and sitting still--and Helmsley went around to help different writers quietly.
As time passed, Bark began to notice that Mr. Helmsley was looking winsome and melancholy; he heard him advising the writers in a detached voice. Bark's curiosity faded, though, and he continued concentrating on his future and observing the blank paper.
Silently, Helmsley walked up behind Bark. He slowly tapped him on the shoulder. He slipped a stapled short story onto Bark's desk as Bark turned his head.
Helmsley was smiling with a pleading expression.
Bark looked at the story on his desk, and, after an inaudible sigh, began to read it to the writers.
It was about a Painting and Drawing Advisor's activities and hopes.
Helmsley breathed in deeply every two or three sentences while the writers "hmmmed" ponderously.
Bark read: "At this point she felt she might approach this strapping supporter with the piece that was the pivoting spot of her life. The self-portrait she hid all..."
Helmsley's nostrils were in a continuous flare from this paragraph on, and they finally wavered back to normal during the closing sentence. he studied all the faces as Bark cleared his throat and laid the story down.
Helmsley glance at Bark and Bark said, "There it is." He paused. "What does everyone think of this story?"
The writers didn't say anything.
Helmsley spoke up. "I'd like you to say what you think of it, Mr.--"
"Well I'll tell you, sir. When I was reading the third paragraph, I couldn't help noticing the blinding compliment the narrator--oh, bestows on the heroine."
Helmsley did not move.
"The narrator pulls us along, then, into a fatty passage about her being great but unappreciated. The author has the amateurish habit of dismissing the main character's intolerable activities as proper in the first place. Whoever wrote this only reads his own stuff."
Another writer finally spoke. "Well, i felt sorry for the narrator--I mean the author himself--because I can see how he is struggling to write a lovable story."
Now there was a general buzz of discussion around the room, and Bark eyed Helmsley sinking down the side of an empty desk.
"Oh, Mr. Helmsley," he said, drowning out and quieting all the other writers, "I noticed--" (meanwhile, Helmsley was moving his body up a little straighter), "--about three split infinitives in the last paragraph." He shook the paper a little bit. "It is written: 'She flushed the razor down the toilet to hopelessly confuse...' Note: '...to slowly drain one's life.'...Here we go. Number Three: '...to dismayingly be found...' "
Helmsley seemed to be trying to talk, but his mouth moved open for no sound.
Bark asked all of the writers: "What is wrong with this story?" Then he said, "I will tell you."
Numbering the faults, Bark dissolved the story Helmsley had cautiously handed him ten minutes before.
Helmsley was rubbing his hair while Bark pronounced his observations.
The writers were listening intently and would raise their hands and say things to indicate their fascination with Bark's observations.
Helmsley was finally called on to state his opinion.
He stood up proudly, and said nothing for about ten seconds.
At the ninth second, another writer started talking: "I actually don't think he made much of an effort."
Helmsley closed his mouth.
The writer kept formulating opinions, and during a pause Bark cut in, saying, "Another fascinating point--" and he was sly "--would probably be offered up by Mr. Helmsley."
Helmsley was standing, and felt his feet teeter-tottering a bit. He eventually spoke. "I know the story is not well patterned, but--"
Bark stared.
Helmsley had taken three and a half months to write the story.
"I feel it has merit in some spots; meretricious merit."
Bark asked for an example.
Helmsley sat down and said, "I'm sort of tired." He waved his hand slightly in an Advisor's indication to go back to work.
Bark had a satisfied look in his eyes, and put a piece of paper in a typewriter he lifted from the rack of the desk next to him, and started typing away furiously. His title was "Spokane--The Town That Refreshes." He wrote a whole page in about seven minutes.
The other writers pondered and wrote sentences minutes apart.
Helmsley sat with his hand on his forehead.
Bark had another page written in another seven minutes. he double-spaced, too.
He had a ten-page story finished in a little over an hour, which turned out a few centuries later to save humanity.
Helmsley sat in ignored, profound triviality.
* * *
I wrote this in 1978, after watching WOR's re-run of THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT, the British TV movie of Quentin Crisp's autobiography. John Hurt played Quentin Crisp. I'd seen it when it was run the first time, a few months before, and found it very moving, especially at moments when Crisp seemed as if about to faint. The second time it was run, I watched it with my father. He kept pointing out that Crisp was making very good points. Dad knew me better than I knew myself. When I wrote "The Literary Advisor," Hurt's performance was on my mind. Mr. Helmsley, the Literary Advisor, is based on that performance. I was making fun of Helmsley, but I hoped he was the sympathetic figure and not Bark, who was based on what I feared I would become. I'd had a Creative Writing unit in twelfth-grade English. The teacher told us that she'd secretly turned in a story of her own a few years before and that the kids had ripped it apart, causing her to weep. She loved us and told us she wasn't going to do that to us. I'd also had some exposure to the Creative Writing mafia, when, in 1974, my father got me in free to the Hofstra Writer's Conference. A Newsday reporter wrote an article about the Conference with the headline "Would-Be Writers Get Aid For Egos." Sombody taped it to a classroom door and several hurt people discussed it in a question and answer session with an established writer. I hated the Newsday reporter and the people who complained about it. A few months after I wrote "The Literary Advisor" I was taking Creative Writing in college and became quite as snotty as Bark. I saw Quentin Crisp almost twenty years later in a diner. He was giving an interview to a fascinated young man and was anything but defeated.
The Literary Advisor
by Fred Wemyss
There was a very gigantic room with rows of desks throughout, which made room for only small crawlspaces, through which the Literary Advisor walked. Seemingly, the room teemed with writers scrawling or typing away, all ambitious to satisfy the Advisor Helmsley.
He was their idol. The image of the lonely observer, he was; noting every one of their moves and helping them. When he held up his nose and snorted it looked like a lack of hope; but not like disdain.
A writer in that room would write endlessly; hoping to perfect his work; feeling fearful and inferior. All the writers wanted to gratify Helmsley.
Helmsley walked along playfully; gliding. He saw one girl's work and said suddenly and very loud, "Your use of the phrase here 'blue patching' has," and he paused and raised his head, "texture."
The girl had trouble concentrating for the first few minutes after his flattering her, but her rigorous training helped her to a high level of concentration when she started work again.
At a point much farther down the room, Advisor Helmsley was standing and holding a writer's paper up closely to see. The man sat patiently with his hands folded, contentedly awaiting Mr. Helmsley's dramatic reading.
"People." Everyone looked up. "Please; pens and pencils down. Typewriters locked." The Advisor was holding the paper very carefully. Helmsley read:
"Spider walked along the balcony. Lavinia was on the rug on the lower level. Spider smelled the bouquet Lavinia held; and he flew off the balcony, and lowered himself on his string into that bouquet. Lavinia usually noticed things like..."
Helmsley smiled. "This is marvelous."
After the writers finished swooning, Mr. Helmsley gave advice quietly to individual writers; often advice on how to space lines and cross-out and improve.
The writers happily wrote away, in the usual line of things.
Helmsley picked up Bark's paper and saw the words, in quotation marks, "Spokane--The Town That Refreshes."
" 'Spokane. The Town That Refreshes?' Mr. Bark, I do hope you can continue with this." Bark was a literary genius. He had impressed his overlings all his life, and didn't have to practice. He had a literary authority which awed his peers and truly inspired Advisors. He didn't write anymore, though.
Helmsley said, "Please, read us this week's writings, Mr. Bark."
Bark took out a thick folder labeled with his name in heavy magic marker.
Helmsley was looking around the room smiling, with delighted eyes.
Everyone watched.
Bark pulled out his sheaf. He removed the top sheet and put it on the bottom. He took the new top sheet and put that on the bottom. Both of them were blank. Bark took a third sheet and placed it on a space on his desk, and plopped the stack onto it.
Mr. Helmsley had a disappointed, sorrowful expression on his face.
Bark took another top sheet and, lifting the stack, lightly put it underneath. He started flipping the sides of the stack.
He did this with a calm "I can't do anything about this either" expression.
"Do you--?" asked Helmsley.
But Bark started talking at the same moment. He was holding the paper with the one line he wrote that day. He read: " 'Spokane--The Town That Refreshes.' "
The writers were silent. [Mr. Helmsley asked Bark if that was all he had written. When Bark said it was,] Helmsley started to walk away, saying, "Well...", since he couldn't cope with any writer's downfall.
But, as he walked away, Bark stuck out his foot, sending Helmsley tripping. The genius Bark said, "Oh...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trip you."
Advisor Helmsley smiled a bit and said, dusting off his pants, "Oh, it's alright."
Bark returned to his work--which consisted of thinking and sitting still--and Helmsley went around to help different writers quietly.
As time passed, Bark began to notice that Mr. Helmsley was looking winsome and melancholy; he heard him advising the writers in a detached voice. Bark's curiosity faded, though, and he continued concentrating on his future and observing the blank paper.
Silently, Helmsley walked up behind Bark. He slowly tapped him on the shoulder. He slipped a stapled short story onto Bark's desk as Bark turned his head.
Helmsley was smiling with a pleading expression.
Bark looked at the story on his desk, and, after an inaudible sigh, began to read it to the writers.
It was about a Painting and Drawing Advisor's activities and hopes.
Helmsley breathed in deeply every two or three sentences while the writers "hmmmed" ponderously.
Bark read: "At this point she felt she might approach this strapping supporter with the piece that was the pivoting spot of her life. The self-portrait she hid all..."
Helmsley's nostrils were in a continuous flare from this paragraph on, and they finally wavered back to normal during the closing sentence. he studied all the faces as Bark cleared his throat and laid the story down.
Helmsley glance at Bark and Bark said, "There it is." He paused. "What does everyone think of this story?"
The writers didn't say anything.
Helmsley spoke up. "I'd like you to say what you think of it, Mr.--"
"Well I'll tell you, sir. When I was reading the third paragraph, I couldn't help noticing the blinding compliment the narrator--oh, bestows on the heroine."
Helmsley did not move.
"The narrator pulls us along, then, into a fatty passage about her being great but unappreciated. The author has the amateurish habit of dismissing the main character's intolerable activities as proper in the first place. Whoever wrote this only reads his own stuff."
Another writer finally spoke. "Well, i felt sorry for the narrator--I mean the author himself--because I can see how he is struggling to write a lovable story."
Now there was a general buzz of discussion around the room, and Bark eyed Helmsley sinking down the side of an empty desk.
"Oh, Mr. Helmsley," he said, drowning out and quieting all the other writers, "I noticed--" (meanwhile, Helmsley was moving his body up a little straighter), "--about three split infinitives in the last paragraph." He shook the paper a little bit. "It is written: 'She flushed the razor down the toilet to hopelessly confuse...' Note: '...to slowly drain one's life.'...Here we go. Number Three: '...to dismayingly be found...' "
Helmsley seemed to be trying to talk, but his mouth moved open for no sound.
Bark asked all of the writers: "What is wrong with this story?" Then he said, "I will tell you."
Numbering the faults, Bark dissolved the story Helmsley had cautiously handed him ten minutes before.
Helmsley was rubbing his hair while Bark pronounced his observations.
The writers were listening intently and would raise their hands and say things to indicate their fascination with Bark's observations.
Helmsley was finally called on to state his opinion.
He stood up proudly, and said nothing for about ten seconds.
At the ninth second, another writer started talking: "I actually don't think he made much of an effort."
Helmsley closed his mouth.
The writer kept formulating opinions, and during a pause Bark cut in, saying, "Another fascinating point--" and he was sly "--would probably be offered up by Mr. Helmsley."
Helmsley was standing, and felt his feet teeter-tottering a bit. He eventually spoke. "I know the story is not well patterned, but--"
Bark stared.
Helmsley had taken three and a half months to write the story.
"I feel it has merit in some spots; meretricious merit."
Bark asked for an example.
Helmsley sat down and said, "I'm sort of tired." He waved his hand slightly in an Advisor's indication to go back to work.
Bark had a satisfied look in his eyes, and put a piece of paper in a typewriter he lifted from the rack of the desk next to him, and started typing away furiously. His title was "Spokane--The Town That Refreshes." He wrote a whole page in about seven minutes.
The other writers pondered and wrote sentences minutes apart.
Helmsley sat with his hand on his forehead.
Bark had another page written in another seven minutes. he double-spaced, too.
He had a ten-page story finished in a little over an hour, which turned out a few centuries later to save humanity.
Helmsley sat in ignored, profound triviality.
* * *
I wrote this in 1978, after watching WOR's re-run of THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT, the British TV movie of Quentin Crisp's autobiography. John Hurt played Quentin Crisp. I'd seen it when it was run the first time, a few months before, and found it very moving, especially at moments when Crisp seemed as if about to faint. The second time it was run, I watched it with my father. He kept pointing out that Crisp was making very good points. Dad knew me better than I knew myself. When I wrote "The Literary Advisor," Hurt's performance was on my mind. Mr. Helmsley, the Literary Advisor, is based on that performance. I was making fun of Helmsley, but I hoped he was the sympathetic figure and not Bark, who was based on what I feared I would become. I'd had a Creative Writing unit in twelfth-grade English. The teacher told us that she'd secretly turned in a story of her own a few years before and that the kids had ripped it apart, causing her to weep. She loved us and told us she wasn't going to do that to us. I'd also had some exposure to the Creative Writing mafia, when, in 1974, my father got me in free to the Hofstra Writer's Conference. A Newsday reporter wrote an article about the Conference with the headline "Would-Be Writers Get Aid For Egos." Sombody taped it to a classroom door and several hurt people discussed it in a question and answer session with an established writer. I hated the Newsday reporter and the people who complained about it. A few months after I wrote "The Literary Advisor" I was taking Creative Writing in college and became quite as snotty as Bark. I saw Quentin Crisp almost twenty years later in a diner. He was giving an interview to a fascinated young man and was anything but defeated.
# posted by Fredwemyss @ 5:19 AM 
