Read Online Arkansas by David Leavitt - Free Book Online Page A

up.
    Modernism and espionage, Diaspora and homosexuality, religious mania and anti-Semitism and most vividly
—
to me most vividly
—
desire and disease, gruesomely coupled.
    â€œFantastic,” I said. For all at once—sometimes inspiration really is all at once—I saw who Ben’s Ripper had to be.
    The Ripper was the spirit of the twentieth century itself.
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    I worked fast those next days, faster than I’d ever worked on anything else. Looking back, I see that the pleasure I experienced as I wrote that paper lay in its contemplation as a completed object, like the Bailey bridge novel I was sure I would never begin. Or a Bailey bridge, for that matter. Bank to bank I built, and as I did a destination, a connection, neared. It was the same end I’d hoped to reach in my Somerset book: a sort of poeticization of that moment when the soul of my own century, the soul of vacancy itself, devoured the last faithful remnants of an age that had believed, almost without question, in presences.
    After that, from the unholy loins of Jack the Ripper, whole traditions of alienation had been spilled, of which I was merely one exemplary homunculus. Eric was another: Eric with his cheerful, well-intentioned immorality. And Hunter. Even Ben. We were the nightmare Mary Kelly had dreamed the night she was murdered.
    I finished, to my own surprise, three days early. That same afternoon my agent called. “Congratulate me,” I said. “I’ve just done the best work of my life.”
    â€œCongratulations,” Andrew said. “Now when do I get to see pages?” To which request I responded, rather unconvincingly, “Soon.”
    How could I have explained to him that the only thing that made it possible for me to write those pages was the knowledge that they would never bear my name?
    I called Ben. He sounded happy and surprised at my news, and as before we arranged to meet on the third floor of the Beverly Center parking lot.
    He was waiting in his car when I pulled up. “Nice to see you, Mr. Leavitt,” he said.
    â€œNice to see you too, Ben.” I climbed in. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
    â€œMm.” He was staring expectantly at my briefcase.
    â€œOh, the paper,” I said, taking it out and handing it to him.
    â€œGreat,” Ben said. “Let’s go up to the roof and I’ll read it.”
    â€œRead it?”
    â€œWhat, you think I’m going to turn in a paper I haven’t read?” He shook his head in wonderment, then inserting the key in the ignition, drove us up into sunlight. To be honest, I was a little surprised: after all, none of the other boys for whom I’d written had ever felt the need to verify the quality of my work. (Then again none of the other boys had been remotely scrupulous in the second sense of the word, either.) Still, I couldn’t deny Ben the right to look over something that was going to be turned in under his name; in addition to which the prospect of seeing his astounded face as he reached the end of my last paragraph did rather thrill me; even in such a situation as this, I still had my writer’s vanity. So I sat there, my ripper’s eyes fixed on the contoured immensity in his polyester slacks, and only balked when he took a pen from his shirt pocket and crossed out a line.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    â€œI just think this sentence about Druitt is a bit redundant. Look.”
    I looked. It was redundant.
    â€œBut you can’t turn in a paper all marked up like that!”
    â€œWhat, you thought I was going to turn in this copy? Are you kidding? No way! I’ll type it over tonight on my own computer.”
    He returned to his reading. Periodically he jotted a note in the margin, or drew a line through a word or phrase. All of which made me so nervous, he might have been Michiko Kakutani sitting in the next seat, reviewing one of my novels while I watched.
    Finally Ben put