Subject: Re: Why Time Begins on Opening Day
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 04 2000 - 15:27:01 EDT
On Tue, Apr 04, 2000 at 10:59:08AM -0700, Cecilia Baader quoted Paul:
> >(I was about to say that I'd rather go to game seven of a World Series with
> >Roger Angell than sit in the Glass bathroom with JDS and
> >Zooey when it struck me that our reclusive mentor would never agree > to
> >such a meeting, and I'd never want to be stuck alone beside a steaming
> >bathtub with a naked Z. Glass! Perhaps this means I'm a
> >bad bananafish, and I should ask Tim to take me off the list?)
I will tell of a bizarre opium dream I had last night, though there
was no opium or anything else involved:
The New Yorker staff was kicked out of its office space and needed to
camp somewhere.
They ended up at JDS's house.
He begrudgingly let them in, making sarcastic remarks about how he
wasn't good enough for them anymore, but that they felt completely
comfortable showing up on his doorstep looking for office space. Once
he got that gripe out of the way, he let them in. His only condition
was that nobody could bother him in his easy chair, where he had a
manuscript that was about three feet high.
I came upon the premises with Lillian Ross, who, in the dream, was my
mother. I was tagging along with old mom for a day in the office, and
looked forward to finding myself alone with a typewriter for a good part
of the day.
When we arrived, the master of the house greeting Lillian with warmth,
but looked me up and down as if to say, "but he's got to be here?"
Lillian made a beeline for a typewriter in a room full of them, and got
the last seat. JDS looked me over again, none too pleased, and said,
"Go, use my room," pointing to a doorway that was blocked by an ottoman.
Ernest Hemingway was storming back and forth about why the magazine
wouldn't publish any of his stories. Everyone ignored him.
I tried to get around or over the ottoman, but it was very difficult,
and I saw inside that there was no typewriter, no paper, nothing to work
with. The master of the house came up to me again -- now he was livid
-- and said, "I can't work with you standing there. Either go in the
room or leave." I pointed to the table in the room where one would
expect a typewriter, and pointed out that there was no typewriter for me
to work on, too intimidated to say anything. He said, "Hemingway
must have taken it." Hemingway passed by, roared at us to get out of
his way or he'd pull his Luger and show us its merits. He denied taking
anyone's typewriter. I slung my legs over the impossibly high ottoman,
and sat in the room as if I were in a bare waiting room at the doctor's
office.
Peace settled. Except for Hemingway, who continued pacing the length of
the house, apparently revising a manuscript while walking, bellowing the
whole time about his inability to get a story in the "goddamn magazine."
All I can say is that I thanked some higher power when I woke up from
it. It took two cups of coffee to knock the spiderwebs from my head.
--tim
P.S. There was no evidence of a bathtub, bathroom, or Zooey bathing.
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