Read Online The Woman in the Fifth by Douglas Kennedy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Douglas Kennedy
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paid. I just wanted to think about achieving the daily quota. Five hundred words . . . the length of many an email I used to bang out in less than twenty minutes. . . .
Five hundred words. It was nothing, really.
Until you started trying to turn that five hundred words into fiction, day in, day out.
My novel . . . my first novel . . . the novel I told myself twenty years ago that I would write. It was going to be an Augie March for our times; a large, sprawling, picaresque Bildungsroman about growing up awkward in New Jersey, and surviving the domestic warfare of my parents and the dismal conformism of sixties suburbia.
For months – during the worst of the nightmare into which I had been landed – I kept myself alive with the idea that, once I negotiated an escape route out of hell, I'd find a quiet place in which to get it all down on paper, and finally demonstrate to the world that I was the serious writer I always knew myself to be. I'll show the bastards is a statement uttered by someone who has suffered a setback . . . or, more typically, has hit bottom. But as a resident of the latter category, I also knew that, rather than being some EST-style rallying cry, it was a howl from the last-chance saloon.
Five hundred words . That was the quotidian task, and one which I knew I could fulfill . . . because I had nothing else to do with my time.
Nothing except go to the cinema. The majority of my free time outside my chambre was spent haunting all those darkened rooms around town which cater to film junkies like myself. The geography of Paris was, for me, defined by its cinemas. Every Monday I'd spend sixteen euros on a carte orange hebdomadaire – a weekly travel card, which gave me access to all métros and buses within the Paris city limits. The card let me whizz around town at will – all the travels outside my quartier largely pertaining to my cinema habit. Once the five hundred words were down on the computer, I'd be free to leave the room and begin the movie-going day. The Fifth was my preferred terrain, as there were over fifteen cinemas in a square mile. Most of them specialized in old stuff. At the Action Écoles, there was always a director's festival in progress: Hitchcock this week, Kurosawa the next, alternating with a season of Anthony Mann Westerns. Down the road at Le Reflet Medicis, I spent a very happy three days watching every Ealing Comedy ever made, finding myself in floods of tears at the end of Whisky Galore . . . more an indication of my fragile state than of the film's emotional headiness. A few streets away, at the Accatone, they were always showing one of Pasolini's stranger explorations of the out-there frontiers of human behavior. I could make it from the Accatone to Le Quartier Latin in about three minutes for a Buñuel season. I could stroll over into the Sixth to nose around the film noir rarities at the Action Christine. Or, best of all, I could jump the métro to Bercy and hide out at the Cinémathèque until midnight.
Every day, I'd spend at least six hours at the movies. But before heading out on this daily movie marathon, I'd check my email.
The Internet café was located on the rue des Petites Écuries. It was a small storefront operation. There were a dozen computers positioned on unvarnished wooden cubicles, fronted by grubby orange plastic chairs. Behind this was a small bar which served coffee and booze. It cost one euro fifty an hour to check email and surf the Net. There was always a bearded guy in his thirties behind the bar. He looked Turkish, but spoke good French – though our conversations were always limited to a few basic pleasantries and the exchange of money for an Internet password or a coffee. Whenever I showed up, he was always on his cellphone, deep in some rapid-fire conversation – a conversation which turned into a low whisper as I bought my password and settled down in front of a computer. I could always see him studying me as I
Five hundred words. It was nothing, really.
Until you started trying to turn that five hundred words into fiction, day in, day out.
My novel . . . my first novel . . . the novel I told myself twenty years ago that I would write. It was going to be an Augie March for our times; a large, sprawling, picaresque Bildungsroman about growing up awkward in New Jersey, and surviving the domestic warfare of my parents and the dismal conformism of sixties suburbia.
For months – during the worst of the nightmare into which I had been landed – I kept myself alive with the idea that, once I negotiated an escape route out of hell, I'd find a quiet place in which to get it all down on paper, and finally demonstrate to the world that I was the serious writer I always knew myself to be. I'll show the bastards is a statement uttered by someone who has suffered a setback . . . or, more typically, has hit bottom. But as a resident of the latter category, I also knew that, rather than being some EST-style rallying cry, it was a howl from the last-chance saloon.
Five hundred words . That was the quotidian task, and one which I knew I could fulfill . . . because I had nothing else to do with my time.
Nothing except go to the cinema. The majority of my free time outside my chambre was spent haunting all those darkened rooms around town which cater to film junkies like myself. The geography of Paris was, for me, defined by its cinemas. Every Monday I'd spend sixteen euros on a carte orange hebdomadaire – a weekly travel card, which gave me access to all métros and buses within the Paris city limits. The card let me whizz around town at will – all the travels outside my quartier largely pertaining to my cinema habit. Once the five hundred words were down on the computer, I'd be free to leave the room and begin the movie-going day. The Fifth was my preferred terrain, as there were over fifteen cinemas in a square mile. Most of them specialized in old stuff. At the Action Écoles, there was always a director's festival in progress: Hitchcock this week, Kurosawa the next, alternating with a season of Anthony Mann Westerns. Down the road at Le Reflet Medicis, I spent a very happy three days watching every Ealing Comedy ever made, finding myself in floods of tears at the end of Whisky Galore . . . more an indication of my fragile state than of the film's emotional headiness. A few streets away, at the Accatone, they were always showing one of Pasolini's stranger explorations of the out-there frontiers of human behavior. I could make it from the Accatone to Le Quartier Latin in about three minutes for a Buñuel season. I could stroll over into the Sixth to nose around the film noir rarities at the Action Christine. Or, best of all, I could jump the métro to Bercy and hide out at the Cinémathèque until midnight.
Every day, I'd spend at least six hours at the movies. But before heading out on this daily movie marathon, I'd check my email.
The Internet café was located on the rue des Petites Écuries. It was a small storefront operation. There were a dozen computers positioned on unvarnished wooden cubicles, fronted by grubby orange plastic chairs. Behind this was a small bar which served coffee and booze. It cost one euro fifty an hour to check email and surf the Net. There was always a bearded guy in his thirties behind the bar. He looked Turkish, but spoke good French – though our conversations were always limited to a few basic pleasantries and the exchange of money for an Internet password or a coffee. Whenever I showed up, he was always on his cellphone, deep in some rapid-fire conversation – a conversation which turned into a low whisper as I bought my password and settled down in front of a computer. I could always see him studying me as I
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