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Authors: Richard Yates
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his words in print.
Another heartening aspect of that spring was that Tom and Pat Nelson continued to give every sign of friendliness. They came to the Davenports’ for dinner twice and entertained them once again at their own little place, where the incident of the rug was never mentioned. Tom read the corrected galleys of Michael’s book and pronounced it “nice,” which was a littledisappointing – it would take Michael a few more years to learn that “nice” was about as far as Nelson ever went in praising anything – but then he made it better by asking if he could copy out two or three of the poems, because he said he’d like to illustrate them. When the Nelsons left town for their new home – and by then the very name of Putnam County seemed almost to have taken on the sound of happiness itself – there were easy promises that they would all be seeing one another soon.
A photographer from
Chain Store Age
offered to take Michael’s jacket photograph free of charge, in order to have a credit line on the book, but Michael didn’t like any of the man’s contact prints; he wanted to throw them all away and hire “a real photographer” instead.
“Oh, that’s silly,” Lucy said. “I think one or two of these are very striking – this one especially. Besides, what’re you trying to do? Get a screen test at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer?”
But their only serious discord came over the “biographical statement” that would be printed beneath the picture. Michael secluded himself to try and get it right, knowing he was taking too long over it but knowing too how closely he had always read such statements by other new poets, knowing how subtly and infernally important these things could be. And this was the finished copy he brought out for Lucy’s approval:
Michael Davenport was bom in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1924. He served in the Army Air Force during the war, attended Harvard, lost early in the Golden Gloves, and now lives in Larchmont, New York, with his wife and their daughter.
“I don’t get the part about the Golden Gloves,” she said.
“Oh, honey, there’s nothing to ‘get.’ You know I did that. I did it in Boston, the year before I met you; I’ve told you about it a hundred times. And I did lose early. Shit, I never even got beyond the third—”
“I don’t like it.”
“Look,” he said. “It’s
good
if you can work a light, self-deprecating touch into something like this. Otherwise it’s—”
“But this isn’t light and it isn’t self-deprecating,” she told him. “It’s painfully self-conscious, that’s all it is. It’s as though you’re afraid ‘Harvard’ may sound sort of prissy, so you want to counteract it right away with this two-fisted nonsense about prizefighting. Listen: You know these writers who’ve spent their whole lives in college? With their advanced degrees and their teaching appointments and their steady rise to full professorship? Well, a lot of them are scared to put
that
stuff on their book jackets, so they get themselves photographed in work shirts and they fall back on all the dumb little summer jobs they had when they were kids: ‘William So-and-so has been a cowhand, a truck driver, a wheat harvester, and a merchant seaman.’ Don’t you see how ludicrous that is?”
Michael walked away from her across the living room, keeping his back straight, and didn’t speak until he had turned and settled himself in an armchair that left at least fifteen feet of floor between them.
“It’s grown increasingly clear lately,” he said then, not quite looking at her, “that you’ve come to think of me as a fool.”
There was a silence, and when he looked up into her eyes he found them bright with tears. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, Michael, is that really the way I’ve been? Oh, how hateful. Oh, Michael, I never, never meant – oh, Michael.”
And from the slow, almost theatrical way she came across that fifteen-foot space, he knew even before
Another heartening aspect of that spring was that Tom and Pat Nelson continued to give every sign of friendliness. They came to the Davenports’ for dinner twice and entertained them once again at their own little place, where the incident of the rug was never mentioned. Tom read the corrected galleys of Michael’s book and pronounced it “nice,” which was a littledisappointing – it would take Michael a few more years to learn that “nice” was about as far as Nelson ever went in praising anything – but then he made it better by asking if he could copy out two or three of the poems, because he said he’d like to illustrate them. When the Nelsons left town for their new home – and by then the very name of Putnam County seemed almost to have taken on the sound of happiness itself – there were easy promises that they would all be seeing one another soon.
A photographer from
Chain Store Age
offered to take Michael’s jacket photograph free of charge, in order to have a credit line on the book, but Michael didn’t like any of the man’s contact prints; he wanted to throw them all away and hire “a real photographer” instead.
“Oh, that’s silly,” Lucy said. “I think one or two of these are very striking – this one especially. Besides, what’re you trying to do? Get a screen test at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer?”
But their only serious discord came over the “biographical statement” that would be printed beneath the picture. Michael secluded himself to try and get it right, knowing he was taking too long over it but knowing too how closely he had always read such statements by other new poets, knowing how subtly and infernally important these things could be. And this was the finished copy he brought out for Lucy’s approval:
Michael Davenport was bom in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1924. He served in the Army Air Force during the war, attended Harvard, lost early in the Golden Gloves, and now lives in Larchmont, New York, with his wife and their daughter.
“I don’t get the part about the Golden Gloves,” she said.
“Oh, honey, there’s nothing to ‘get.’ You know I did that. I did it in Boston, the year before I met you; I’ve told you about it a hundred times. And I did lose early. Shit, I never even got beyond the third—”
“I don’t like it.”
“Look,” he said. “It’s
good
if you can work a light, self-deprecating touch into something like this. Otherwise it’s—”
“But this isn’t light and it isn’t self-deprecating,” she told him. “It’s painfully self-conscious, that’s all it is. It’s as though you’re afraid ‘Harvard’ may sound sort of prissy, so you want to counteract it right away with this two-fisted nonsense about prizefighting. Listen: You know these writers who’ve spent their whole lives in college? With their advanced degrees and their teaching appointments and their steady rise to full professorship? Well, a lot of them are scared to put
that
stuff on their book jackets, so they get themselves photographed in work shirts and they fall back on all the dumb little summer jobs they had when they were kids: ‘William So-and-so has been a cowhand, a truck driver, a wheat harvester, and a merchant seaman.’ Don’t you see how ludicrous that is?”
Michael walked away from her across the living room, keeping his back straight, and didn’t speak until he had turned and settled himself in an armchair that left at least fifteen feet of floor between them.
“It’s grown increasingly clear lately,” he said then, not quite looking at her, “that you’ve come to think of me as a fool.”
There was a silence, and when he looked up into her eyes he found them bright with tears. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, Michael, is that really the way I’ve been? Oh, how hateful. Oh, Michael, I never, never meant – oh, Michael.”
And from the slow, almost theatrical way she came across that fifteen-foot space, he knew even before
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