Fred Wemyss

1972: I see my first Tennessee Williams play, THE GLASS MENAGERIE. It is at P.A.F. Playhouse, a repertory company here in Huntington, New York. It's an intimate little theatre and I find the Gentleman Caller not only gentlemanly but callworthy. He is blond with a soft voice and hidden wit.
1972: I turn twelve.
1972: I am a boy.
1972: I see my first Ibsen play, HEDDA GABLER. It is at P.A.F. Playhouse. Hedda's husband is blond with a soft voice and wears wire-rimmed glasses. But I can tell he's the Gentleman Caller underneath the glasses. It is an intimate little theatre.
1972: I see my first incomprehensible play, THE SHOW-OFF. The Gentleman Caller isn't in it, which is incomprehensible. It's P.A.F. Playhouse, after all.
1972: I see my first cross-dressing play, CHARLIE'S AUNT. Even without the Gentleman Caller, I feel at home. It's P.A.F. Playhouse, after all.
1972: I see the Gentleman Caller at the supermarket. I pass by, pretending not to notice. I go down the other aisle. I come up the next. I see him. I walk up to him. He doesn't see me. I walk away, turn around and look at him. I'm about to say, "You were in THE GLASS MENAGERIE." He has the wire-rimmed glasses. I meet his eyes. I turn and run.
1972: I see THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD at P.A.F. Playhouse. The Gentleman Caller isn't in this one, either. I miss the wire-rimmed glasses more than the startled eyes behind them.
1972-Present: Tennessee Williams still talks to me. His is an intimate little space.

I've read the first book of the post-World War Two novel FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, by James Jones. The entire novel is about 700 pages. The first book is about 85 pages. I enjoyed the first book thoroughly, but I'm a slow reader, so it took me about three weeks. (I usually read for about an hour before bed. I'll read a NEW YORKER article, look at a review saved from the TIMES and then a bit of a chapter from a novel. I read in bed, often falling asleep resting on my elbow, my hand holding up my head. I'll be in the middle of a paragraph. I'll wake up, try to keep reading, fall asleep again, and then, when my hand hurts from holding my head up and my elbow hurts from keeping my hand in such a position as to allow the holding up of my head, I wake up again and shut off the lamp. So my progress reading FROM HERE TO ETERNITY was tortoise-like.)
I've returned the book to the library, because it was due and because I want to take a break from it. I want to finish it. I very rarely want to finish a book. This one is very good. I had forgotten that great literature doesn't have to treat the rest of literature as if it were a sampler from which to draw. You don't have to have read any other writers to get James Jones's exact meaning. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is the story of an army man. This epic ends with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Very few war novels end with the beginning of the war being described. But Jones pulls the effect off. (How do I know this if I have only read 85 pages? I know my writers, that's how.)
Just before reading the first book of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY I was going to read Norman Mailer's THE NAKED AND THE DEAD. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD is considered the best novel about Americans in World War Two. It is, apparently, one of the most realistic accounts of war ever written. But I opted for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY instead, even though James Jones has been dead since the seventies and Norman Mailer is someone to whom I could send a letter. Even though one of the greatest American novelists is still alive, I have read something by his dead contemporary. I always wanted to read INVISIBLE MAN before Ralph Ellison died, but I didn't, and when I read it I realized I'd have loved to have contacted him. But FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is a novel I can grasp. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD is, from what my father told me, a harrowing book about masculine brutality. But FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is about a professional soldier navigating the military bureacracy and trying to maintain his self-respect. It is not about a climber and it's not about a self-destructive fool. It's about a man who needs the military. He's stationed in Hawaii, he's got his girl and he wants to be the bugler but cannot because the compromises he must make are intolerable to him. And at the end of the novel, he, above all the other soldiers of any rank, is the one who's ready, because he lives, breathes and tastes army life. He doesn't want to run a business, be a lawyer or own property. He loves the three square meals a day the army gives him, even if the food is bad. He'll stick with the army even if it keeps him from what he considers his calling. He'll stick with the army even if it wants him to box, which he does well but hates. He has accidently blinded a man boxing and he tries to resist boxing afterward. The army gives him degrading duties because he won't yield to it's request that he box. But he knows an army doesn't exist for games. All the other soldiers are distracted by plans for civilian life, desire for athletic achievement or badges of honor. But the soldier in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY knows his life will be anonymous and hard and he can live with it.

I post a lot of reviews on IMDB.com and Amazon. Often I check a few days later to see if someone has reacted to what I've said. Only once have I really had a direct response, but sometimes I detect an oblique reference to a theme I've hit upon.
I read a lot of the reviews other people have written and I've found that most of the reviews, like mine, miss something that reviews written by professional critics have. This key ingredient is humility. Most of the "Customer Reviews," mine included, are written by people showing off. The professional critics, as arrogant as they can be, have a sense of purpose. The average IMDB reviewer does something for a living other than the reviewing of movies. The average critic published in a newspaper makes his living writing reviews.
The critic will very rarely tell the reader what his favorite movies are. He'll talk about the "best" movie. He'll say something is "fun." He'll say something's a "disaster." He'll even say "This is my favorite movie." But he won't tell you which one actually is his favorite. His favorite is not the best movie ever made. His favorite, even if he says this, is not the worst movie ever made. His favorite is the one he dreams about. Like a lot of people, the critic forgets his dreams as soon as he wakes up.
The IMDB reviewers remember their dreams. They tell their friends their dreams. This is because IMDB reviewers can't completely awaken from their love of movies. A dreamer doesn't know how boring his re-telling of his dreams are.
The critic has awoken from his dreams. He can talk about other people's dreams.
This makes the critic a much better bridge between a movie and a moviegoer than the fan.
A fan's self-involvement becomes an obstacle to the sharing of his love for a particular movie.
A critic may be a fan, but his best reviews (whether these are the best because their praise is well-expressed or because their disdain is properly described) will not be about his favorite movies. If he reviews his favorites he steps aside a little, praising the director for hiring a crack cinematographer. The fan will say "I wish my uncle Harry could have seen this."
The fan will save a seat for Harry.
The critic won't save a seat for anyone. He wants to curl up with a good movie.

I'm sorry/
So sorry/
Please expect/
My lobotomy...

--Old Jukebox Number


Someday I'll write something I've been planning in my head for many years. It will simply be one apology after another, detailing specific humiliations brought on himself by the narrator.
The constant refrain wil be "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

Saul Bellow actually did this in a novella called "Him With His Foot In His Mouth." It takes the form of a letter the writer of the letter has no intention of sending to the person to whom it is addressed; a woman he slighted thirty years earlier.

Sorry, folks, but I have to post this entry. I'll leave you with a quotation from Brenda (Little Miss Dynamite) Lee:

Wuh/
Uh/
Uh-oh/
Uh-oh/
Oh yeh...

Here are some books I haven't written yet:

HIGH DUDGEON--A novel in the style of Wodehouse.

PERSONS FROM PORLOCK--About people who make the main character forget what he's trying to do; the joke being that Coleridge never finished writing "Kubla-Kahn" because his butler came in as he was scribbling and told him that there were "persons from Porlock" at the door.

THE MATERIALIST--A confession.

SEPARATIST(S)--A play in several separate acts.

ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE--A story to be written as if English were not my native tongue.

FOREIGN AS A SECOND LANGUAGE--A double-take.

THE FOREIGN-AMERICAN--A memoir.

SIBLING RIBALDRY--Brotherly wit.

AMERICA IS TURNING INTO CANADA--An objective report.

THE HORSEY SET--Auchincloss's world seen from far away.

DOMEDARY DOMECILES--A phrase I first read while dimly perceiving the above-mentioned world as I scanned the Social Register. A Domedary Domecile (and it may be "Dromedary Domecile," but I can't remember and am too lethargic to go downstairs and lift up my family's extremely bulky "Webster's 2nd") is a house-boat. I used to work at a place which bought used books from people who had copies of the Social Register. I have lived!

GOOD POVERTY--An appeal.

THE ROAD TO MACCA--A story I wrote one night and lost when I pressed "Done." I'll re-write it if I ever again get the inspiration.