Read Online Collected Fictions by Gordon Lish - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gordon Lish
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it.
Anyway, Smithy's next sentence, and all the sentences that came rushing after that one and that I would not have dared to interrupt even to assert Fallacy of the Middle! were proportioned and stately in the organization of their argument. And this is what my brother said—and why my brother has concluded that he must kill his son—and why I am publishing what the reader may apprehend as a "story," but which Smithy, ever the rationalist, will understand is a disclosure one step short of my informing the police and a step quite far enough to stop him in his tracks.
And, of course, the boy Chap will have his fair warning.
It is the least a loving uncle who has made his fortune (and his misfortune) writing can do. He can write as he is able. He can write a "story" that no one but the ones who most matter to him will quite be certain is true. I do see now that it is only through the miracle of the falsehood of fiction that I can catch up the people I love from the truth and consequences of what they might do. The cost to me is very slight in comparison—the exception in a habit for silence (Are you smiling now, dear dead brother, master of ceremonies in all my deliberations?) and the reinstatement, for a time, of the shame that covers me whenever I play the thief of hearts and come like a highwayman to the unsuspecting page.
Speak , Smithy! I am the instrument by which you may submit your supreme reasoning and the dark circumstance that stirred it to unfurl its awful syllogism. And when you have stated your case, I will return for a parting courtesy to the reader, a gesture I swear to be greater than that to which I proved equal when I wished to say the right thing to soothe that splendid girl of Devon. I am thinking I owe a very particular politeness to the reader—who, for the purpose before us, and as do his mother and father, I call Chap.
Listen , Chap. The father of your body is speaking to you. Will you recognize his voice? You were not much more than two years old when you last heard the peculiar American resonance that made your dad a regular on Rosemary of Hilltop House and When a Girl Marries , a kind of choked vibrancy that must have softened when he blessed you to sleep and drew the covers up to just under your chin, high enough that not one whisper of cold would chill your breast, but not so high that your restlessness would slip the blanket higher and impede the glorious song of your breath. This is the father of your body whose voice you are going to hear. Will it be at all familiar to you after fifteen voiceless years? Will it frighten you to hear a silence broken? Certainly the speech he makes will seem frightening—for it is a statement in support of his decision to secure your death. But it is, nonetheless, a reasoned argument, and if you are your father's son, Chap, you will see he has a point.
Listen , boy! A brother I love like life itself, your true father, on the fourth day of November, by long-distance telephone, just after the dinner hour, his voice all repose, his heart deranged, in tumult, said this :
" I HAVE A PAD AND PENCIL here, and it's all worked out, that thing you know I do with columns, this on one side, that on the other. Buddy, can you grab a piece of paper and something to write with? I think it'll help—I think it'll help if you make notes as I go along. I mean, it's just that I want you to know how it happened. Most of it has been happening for years. I think it has always been in the back of my mind since Pert was born. Maybe even before that, in a crazy kind of way. Maybe it dates back to when I kissed Chap goodbye and could never get back to kiss him again. In any case, I don't want you to think this wasn't among the premonitions that always go on in my head—because the head will do these things, Buddy, and you just can't, you know, stop it. Aren't you the expert in this subject? I'm rambling; I'm sorry. All right, I'm going to pick it up from what I've got written
Anyway, Smithy's next sentence, and all the sentences that came rushing after that one and that I would not have dared to interrupt even to assert Fallacy of the Middle! were proportioned and stately in the organization of their argument. And this is what my brother said—and why my brother has concluded that he must kill his son—and why I am publishing what the reader may apprehend as a "story," but which Smithy, ever the rationalist, will understand is a disclosure one step short of my informing the police and a step quite far enough to stop him in his tracks.
And, of course, the boy Chap will have his fair warning.
It is the least a loving uncle who has made his fortune (and his misfortune) writing can do. He can write as he is able. He can write a "story" that no one but the ones who most matter to him will quite be certain is true. I do see now that it is only through the miracle of the falsehood of fiction that I can catch up the people I love from the truth and consequences of what they might do. The cost to me is very slight in comparison—the exception in a habit for silence (Are you smiling now, dear dead brother, master of ceremonies in all my deliberations?) and the reinstatement, for a time, of the shame that covers me whenever I play the thief of hearts and come like a highwayman to the unsuspecting page.
Speak , Smithy! I am the instrument by which you may submit your supreme reasoning and the dark circumstance that stirred it to unfurl its awful syllogism. And when you have stated your case, I will return for a parting courtesy to the reader, a gesture I swear to be greater than that to which I proved equal when I wished to say the right thing to soothe that splendid girl of Devon. I am thinking I owe a very particular politeness to the reader—who, for the purpose before us, and as do his mother and father, I call Chap.
Listen , Chap. The father of your body is speaking to you. Will you recognize his voice? You were not much more than two years old when you last heard the peculiar American resonance that made your dad a regular on Rosemary of Hilltop House and When a Girl Marries , a kind of choked vibrancy that must have softened when he blessed you to sleep and drew the covers up to just under your chin, high enough that not one whisper of cold would chill your breast, but not so high that your restlessness would slip the blanket higher and impede the glorious song of your breath. This is the father of your body whose voice you are going to hear. Will it be at all familiar to you after fifteen voiceless years? Will it frighten you to hear a silence broken? Certainly the speech he makes will seem frightening—for it is a statement in support of his decision to secure your death. But it is, nonetheless, a reasoned argument, and if you are your father's son, Chap, you will see he has a point.
Listen , boy! A brother I love like life itself, your true father, on the fourth day of November, by long-distance telephone, just after the dinner hour, his voice all repose, his heart deranged, in tumult, said this :
" I HAVE A PAD AND PENCIL here, and it's all worked out, that thing you know I do with columns, this on one side, that on the other. Buddy, can you grab a piece of paper and something to write with? I think it'll help—I think it'll help if you make notes as I go along. I mean, it's just that I want you to know how it happened. Most of it has been happening for years. I think it has always been in the back of my mind since Pert was born. Maybe even before that, in a crazy kind of way. Maybe it dates back to when I kissed Chap goodbye and could never get back to kiss him again. In any case, I don't want you to think this wasn't among the premonitions that always go on in my head—because the head will do these things, Buddy, and you just can't, you know, stop it. Aren't you the expert in this subject? I'm rambling; I'm sorry. All right, I'm going to pick it up from what I've got written
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