Résumé With Monsters by William Browning Spencer
Authors: William Browning Spencer
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Horror, American Fiction, 20th Century, Life on other planets, Erotic Fiction, Men, Fiction / Horror, Horror - General
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father's voice muttered. "I am getting nowhere except older. I do not deserve this. It is a rigged game."
Philip was in the kitchen, nursing a beer. Elaine had gone to bed hours ago, and Philip was
alone with his father's querulous voice and the flickering fluorescent light.
Philip felt a cold, crackling terror. In a moment of despairing clarity, he knew what he had heard. He would have preferred a ghost, a moldering ghost with broken teeth and dirt spilling out of its eye sockets. This transformation was more dreadful.
Philip had spoken the words himself.
"No," he said, trying to regain his voice, his own inflections. "No."
It was his father's bitterness that possessed him. It was the implacable weight of the System.
Less than a week later, Elaine asked him how the novel was going. Later she said she had asked in good faith, that she had been curious, interested, nothing more. Philip knew better. She was drunk and mean, mean with the failure of her own art, and he had answered her with his frustration and rage. He had told her that he was not writing a novel, that he was working at a rotten job in order to keep a wife with artistic pretensions supplied with booze and tranquilizers.
Elaine responded by saying that he had spent her money writing what had to be one of the most unengaging monologues ever written, and that pity and horror had kept her from voicing her true assessment of his novel. He needed, however, to hear the truth, and the truth was that The Unraveling of Raymond Hart (the working title) was one of the most insipid and bloated creations ever spawned. More succinctly, it was shit. And, while a publisher might publish sensational shit, a publisher would not publish boring shit, and Unraveling was boring enough to kill an accountant.
Once the battle lines were drawn, they fought often.
#
The research library was located in the basement of a gravy-colored, three-story brick building that squatted in the middle of a parking lot, its tiny windows like the glittering eyes of a mechanical spider. It was a big shoebox of a building, aggressively ugly inside and out and inhabited by unhappy people: secretaries who had lost all hope, narrow-shouldered men in cheap suits who lived in fear of being fired, fast- striding men in better suits who lived in fear of dying before they had fired their quota of timid underlings, and the real bosses, grim, self-assured men, ever vigilant to screw before being screwed.
Every morning, Philip would park and walk through the glass doors and smile at the security guard who never smiled back and get into the small elevator that smelled like dirty wet towels and ammonia and go down to the basement and walk down the green hall to the library. Mrs. Walston would already be there.
She was a dumpy woman, Mr. Grodinov's secretary, and as soon as Philip sat down at his desk, she would begin talking.
"Well Philip, it's good to see you," she would say. Then she would tell him in detail what she had had for breakfast that morning. She would describe the nuances of thought that prompted certain decisions ( I thought, I'll have Grape Nuts, and then I thought, No, I had Grape Nuts two days ago and anyway I'm out of skim milk and only have the regular, which I don't care to use with cereal, and I thought, I'll have a grapefruit with maybe some toast and jam because I just the other day went to the supermarket and...). Philip would listen. Her words would fill him up, like wet concrete, and he would experience a sense of deep despair, brought on in part by Mrs. Walston's narration and in part by the knowledge, bom of experience, that the day offered nothing better, that, in fact, the drama of Mrs. Walston's morning repast would be the highlight of his office hours.
Mr. Grodinov , Philip's boss, would come in an hour or so after Philip. Mr. Grodinov was an old man, bald and small, shrinking daily it seemed into a dusty
Philip was in the kitchen, nursing a beer. Elaine had gone to bed hours ago, and Philip was
alone with his father's querulous voice and the flickering fluorescent light.
Philip felt a cold, crackling terror. In a moment of despairing clarity, he knew what he had heard. He would have preferred a ghost, a moldering ghost with broken teeth and dirt spilling out of its eye sockets. This transformation was more dreadful.
Philip had spoken the words himself.
"No," he said, trying to regain his voice, his own inflections. "No."
It was his father's bitterness that possessed him. It was the implacable weight of the System.
Less than a week later, Elaine asked him how the novel was going. Later she said she had asked in good faith, that she had been curious, interested, nothing more. Philip knew better. She was drunk and mean, mean with the failure of her own art, and he had answered her with his frustration and rage. He had told her that he was not writing a novel, that he was working at a rotten job in order to keep a wife with artistic pretensions supplied with booze and tranquilizers.
Elaine responded by saying that he had spent her money writing what had to be one of the most unengaging monologues ever written, and that pity and horror had kept her from voicing her true assessment of his novel. He needed, however, to hear the truth, and the truth was that The Unraveling of Raymond Hart (the working title) was one of the most insipid and bloated creations ever spawned. More succinctly, it was shit. And, while a publisher might publish sensational shit, a publisher would not publish boring shit, and Unraveling was boring enough to kill an accountant.
Once the battle lines were drawn, they fought often.
#
The research library was located in the basement of a gravy-colored, three-story brick building that squatted in the middle of a parking lot, its tiny windows like the glittering eyes of a mechanical spider. It was a big shoebox of a building, aggressively ugly inside and out and inhabited by unhappy people: secretaries who had lost all hope, narrow-shouldered men in cheap suits who lived in fear of being fired, fast- striding men in better suits who lived in fear of dying before they had fired their quota of timid underlings, and the real bosses, grim, self-assured men, ever vigilant to screw before being screwed.
Every morning, Philip would park and walk through the glass doors and smile at the security guard who never smiled back and get into the small elevator that smelled like dirty wet towels and ammonia and go down to the basement and walk down the green hall to the library. Mrs. Walston would already be there.
She was a dumpy woman, Mr. Grodinov's secretary, and as soon as Philip sat down at his desk, she would begin talking.
"Well Philip, it's good to see you," she would say. Then she would tell him in detail what she had had for breakfast that morning. She would describe the nuances of thought that prompted certain decisions ( I thought, I'll have Grape Nuts, and then I thought, No, I had Grape Nuts two days ago and anyway I'm out of skim milk and only have the regular, which I don't care to use with cereal, and I thought, I'll have a grapefruit with maybe some toast and jam because I just the other day went to the supermarket and...). Philip would listen. Her words would fill him up, like wet concrete, and he would experience a sense of deep despair, brought on in part by Mrs. Walston's narration and in part by the knowledge, bom of experience, that the day offered nothing better, that, in fact, the drama of Mrs. Walston's morning repast would be the highlight of his office hours.
Mr. Grodinov , Philip's boss, would come in an hour or so after Philip. Mr. Grodinov was an old man, bald and small, shrinking daily it seemed into a dusty
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