requires great sympathy between the denier and the denied, and this my father and I had never had.
How long I stood glued in abasement to the store front I don ’ t know, perhaps an hour, perhaps only moments; but eventually I began to walk, at first tentatively, like an invalid just liberated from the sedentary months of his sickbed, taking one precious step and then another until, by a truly enormous effort of will, there came into my step the spirited scrupulosity of a man knowing exactly what he is about. I spent most of that torpid, shimmering day walking, frequently stopping at corner saloons to sip pensively on draft beer. Very late in the afternoon, for no reason I can think of, I took a ferry to New Jersey, went to a saloon, drank a half-dozen beers, and headed back. It was coming back that I saw the city for the first time. Standing in the tuglike prow, while the cool spray of the Hudson mingled with the sunshine, I looked up through the mist of heat and water and saw, to my astonishment, not many towers but one august pillar of gold. Its golden shadow on the water was like an arm stretched forth in benediction, promising that it would deny me nothing. Hans Christian Andersen came to mind: I saw him come fresh from Odense in his ill-fitting confirmation suit, looking for the first time at the wonder of Copenhagen. Thinking thus of him, I made one of those wild, regrettable vows to which youth are prone: I vowed that those things, literary fame et al ., would come to me—and come to me on my own terms. What had I to do with fake fathers, with artifice and legerdemain? The city commanded me to stay, and in obeisance I did in my mind ’ s eye reach out and offer up my hand. It was at that moment I granted the city magnanimity.
After that unnerving day my approach to the job market took a new tack. My knowledge of the advertising–public relations world had been culled from lightheaded novels and nonsensical movies, especially The Hucksters starring the late and peerless Mr. Gable. Recalling how a nattily pin-striped Clark, after blowing his last fifty dollars on a hand-painted four-in-hand, had walked casually into a superbly appointed advertising agency and complacently announced that for “ twenty-five thousand per ” he would permit himself to be considered for employment, I derived the grandiloquently absurd notion that the way to fame and fortune in New York lay in playing it cool. I became The Cool Man, though there were of necessity certain differences between Gable ’ s approach and mine. Where in the movie Gable had been an advertising man, I was—well, a Poet , and, determined to remain glued to this vision of myself, I began a round of interviews in which I attempted to convey to prospective employers that on the far side of their desks Genius resided, that I considered both them and advertising to be monumental frauds, but that, in exchange for certain sums of money (say, ten thousand a year), I would use that genius to sell cornflakes. It was to be a kind of Mephistophelean pact in which they would pay me until that time when the apartment and the Vassar blonde materialized, and I could get down to the business of realizing my talent. Where, in scene after scene of the movie, Gable had been resplendent in pin stripes, charcoal grays, and midnight blues, I had only one shiny suit, which now became perfect for my purposes—just hideous enough to keep me hopelessly removed from the world of my interviewer. Where for character Gable had his famous mustache, I bought a Yello-Bole which, stuck in my teeth, gave me, I thought, a properly ruminative air. Finally, for the coup de grace , I substituted for Gable ’ s striking Homburg a coiffure modeled after an idol of the moment, Truman Capote; though I had then no knowledge of that writer ’ s appreciable talents, I knew that, like me, he was young, and that, as I hoped to be, he was famous. Simply by my neglecting to comb it, my hair now cascaded down
How long I stood glued in abasement to the store front I don ’ t know, perhaps an hour, perhaps only moments; but eventually I began to walk, at first tentatively, like an invalid just liberated from the sedentary months of his sickbed, taking one precious step and then another until, by a truly enormous effort of will, there came into my step the spirited scrupulosity of a man knowing exactly what he is about. I spent most of that torpid, shimmering day walking, frequently stopping at corner saloons to sip pensively on draft beer. Very late in the afternoon, for no reason I can think of, I took a ferry to New Jersey, went to a saloon, drank a half-dozen beers, and headed back. It was coming back that I saw the city for the first time. Standing in the tuglike prow, while the cool spray of the Hudson mingled with the sunshine, I looked up through the mist of heat and water and saw, to my astonishment, not many towers but one august pillar of gold. Its golden shadow on the water was like an arm stretched forth in benediction, promising that it would deny me nothing. Hans Christian Andersen came to mind: I saw him come fresh from Odense in his ill-fitting confirmation suit, looking for the first time at the wonder of Copenhagen. Thinking thus of him, I made one of those wild, regrettable vows to which youth are prone: I vowed that those things, literary fame et al ., would come to me—and come to me on my own terms. What had I to do with fake fathers, with artifice and legerdemain? The city commanded me to stay, and in obeisance I did in my mind ’ s eye reach out and offer up my hand. It was at that moment I granted the city magnanimity.
After that unnerving day my approach to the job market took a new tack. My knowledge of the advertising–public relations world had been culled from lightheaded novels and nonsensical movies, especially The Hucksters starring the late and peerless Mr. Gable. Recalling how a nattily pin-striped Clark, after blowing his last fifty dollars on a hand-painted four-in-hand, had walked casually into a superbly appointed advertising agency and complacently announced that for “ twenty-five thousand per ” he would permit himself to be considered for employment, I derived the grandiloquently absurd notion that the way to fame and fortune in New York lay in playing it cool. I became The Cool Man, though there were of necessity certain differences between Gable ’ s approach and mine. Where in the movie Gable had been an advertising man, I was—well, a Poet , and, determined to remain glued to this vision of myself, I began a round of interviews in which I attempted to convey to prospective employers that on the far side of their desks Genius resided, that I considered both them and advertising to be monumental frauds, but that, in exchange for certain sums of money (say, ten thousand a year), I would use that genius to sell cornflakes. It was to be a kind of Mephistophelean pact in which they would pay me until that time when the apartment and the Vassar blonde materialized, and I could get down to the business of realizing my talent. Where, in scene after scene of the movie, Gable had been resplendent in pin stripes, charcoal grays, and midnight blues, I had only one shiny suit, which now became perfect for my purposes—just hideous enough to keep me hopelessly removed from the world of my interviewer. Where for character Gable had his famous mustache, I bought a Yello-Bole which, stuck in my teeth, gave me, I thought, a properly ruminative air. Finally, for the coup de grace , I substituted for Gable ’ s striking Homburg a coiffure modeled after an idol of the moment, Truman Capote; though I had then no knowledge of that writer ’ s appreciable talents, I knew that, like me, he was young, and that, as I hoped to be, he was famous. Simply by my neglecting to comb it, my hair now cascaded down
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