Graham Greene famously wrote a minimum of 500 words a day, mostly,or so I have read, before any notable amount of alcohol was consumed or love affair begun or ended. It was a self imposed regimen that he held to throughout his life and did not vary due to project, location, war, economic dislocation, travels, residency or any life condition that an educated man of Greene's catholic taste, Socialist views and intellectual abilities encountered. This regimen was held to throughout Greene's prolific career despite suffering through the crashing swings particular to the bi-polar disorder that shadowed his fully lived life The constant demon that clouded a brilliant career and long life. The brilliance of Greene is his use of that cloud to give depth to the palette of colors that are his best works.
It seems a small task for an author of Greene's abilities to write 500 words daily especially if under contract or when a seed of an idea has germinated and taken root. Wouldn't it simply be a matter of taking pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to percolate along a thought, develop a line or theme into a full sailed essay, story or entertainment. So it would seem and so I thought when I first became a follower of Greene's works as a recently graduated University man.
Set free daily from an intellect killing position as a very junior Clerk in a Filipino government owned Commercial Bank for 60 minutes, usually with a brown bag lunch and no chums to pass the hour with, I found the business district of my hometown far from the mysterious one described by Hammett or the raw amusing one described by Twain but an utterly cold boring place indifferent to the individual. It was not the place of urbanity merrily described in the Thin Man. In fact the place was filled or so it seemed, with boars of every stripe. People referred to by me as "those people". Those people being the barbarians otherwise called auslanders, outsiders who simply didn't get it. I was sure that meant suburban commuters or tourists. I'd argue that really it meant just about anyone whose grandparents hadn't been resident in the city when it shook and burnt down in 1906. They were to be engaged with only in business and rarely if ever outside of it. I'm also certain that to those well heeled business men, the ones from every corner of the world, the power brokers that ran the district and owned much of the region, it meant recently graduated University men with low paying jobs who had an hour to kill.
It was a deuce of a chore to keep the hour filled with needed distraction and be back within the hour. For a social young man with a large family nearby as well as a robust social network, it was a painfully boring and lonely daily hour. Luckily one of my noontime strolls was past the windows of the El Dorado Bookstore.
The now long gone historic El Dorado Bookstore on Market Street had more Penguin authors than my University's bookstore and offered an intellectual respite from the drudgery of daily work. My own perch in this lifeboat of culture in the ocean of banal commercial drones were the shelves filled with Greene. My first lunch date with my talented older friend was "the Third Man". It was the start of the affair. An affair that I kept alive by weekly visits and bi-monthly purchases timed around my paydays of my new friends works. I was a thirty man offered a cool glass of fresh water. I drank it gratefully.
I anticipated lunch hours now and found more than a few less traveled quiet places away from the hustle of businessmen hustling each other where I could continue my silent conversation with my friend. I was engaged by everything he wrote. I did struggle with friend Graham's early works, the English seemed far too Ox-Bridge pretentious, often reading as school boy stilted rather than subtle language I'd fallen in love with. Well developed idea's came across as pompous little England burdened by Empire, rather than witty entertainments and suspense's of his middle-period. Greene's earliest works, written when he was my age 60 year's before, were disliked by me unknowingly at the time as being far too pretentious for someone our age. Our friendship had become such that I simply didn't like my new friend's attitude and rushed through those few hours not merrily spent by reading another title in his collective work. The boar that was the narrator's voice had a well spoken yet awful in being self important. That voice in those earlier works was a disquieting voice, a mid 20 something burdened with having to rub shoulders with those outsiders from beyond the Pale who simply didn't get it. The burden of youth is learning adaptive skilks in dealing with people who simply don't get it. The magic of friend Graham is that like a merry great Uncle the difference of 65 years and thousands of miles disappeared so that the young friend Graham honestly annoyed his young friend Reader. The young Master that Greene is in Travels without Maps is not as nuanced as the Master Greene in Brighton Rock but the sureness of his strokes are clear in both works and the style, the mark of him is there bountifully in each.
That mastery, part education, experience and a regimen of discipline. The discipline of writing 500 words daily. Daily. The clarity of tone, an assured masculine voice, a hallmarkof friend Graham was honed by the the mastery of creating art in 500 words daily over decades. I'm profoundly grateful that he did.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
King Philip
The crashing waves broke over the petrified wood of the shipwreck King Philip. Seagulls flew in circles over the long dead bow, a half dozen jet black Ravens had landed on the solid wet sand just east of the remains of the long ago shipwrecked boat and inched there way slowly, ever slowly to the boat.
The naked body of a white man, face-down, lie partially buried in a swirling tide-pool of seawater and sand within the ribs of the boat. The crashing waves of a fall storm recently exposed the remains of the once proud King Philip and the returning tides were quick returning.. The body, the object of the birds, was not a preserved crew member exposed with the retreat of the sand entombing the ship but that of a white man in his late 20's, his marble white skin contrasting sharply with the dirty sand and blackness of the petrified wood of the boat. The body was partially buried in the wet sand and appeared save for its face down position much like a weekend beach goer might. One who had buried himself to the waist to amuse his kids. Its rigidity in repose belied any such idea. The birds saw a meal, the largest of them landed on the bodies buttocks and in a quick motion tore into the fleshy left buttocks and flew away. It new nothing of the man, that he had a wife who would begin to worry about his being gone in a few hours, nor about the drunk janie who having prepared herself so carefully, wearing the sheerest nightie she owned and who drank a bottle of Vodka when she decided he had stood her up, nor of his other friends who continued to call his cellphone tossed into the seagrass in the Sandunes, he was missing another mindless house party full of an endless parade of Cal Fire employees and they needed him to continue the party. They called and called, the messages buzzing on, the battery wearing down until the cell went silent. The voice-mail had been filled hours ago by dozens of calls from a frightened former john named Addige who had overheard a drug dealer at a sex club stonily talk of a gay for pay hooker having been overdosed by another drug dealer who had provided him pure white heroin mixed with special K rather than the usual mix of heroin and fluff.
Few others knew of his existence and two who did had caused the overdose to occur. Fewer still would mourn the man, he was not a very sympathetic individual. His wife would, not so much out of marital happiness, for there had been little of that, but out love of the material life they had together. Her life had been so unrelentingly hard and deprived before he married her that his end meant the end of that world and as no other path would be open to her, a room in a shared rented mobile home trailer park on Santa Rosa Avenue would be her next home. There were no children to ask why daddy how drowned in San Francisco 90 miles from home in Santa Rosa and the life of the junkie was such that if his absence was noted at all it would be with relief by many as he'd become the daily train wreck to be avoided.
That might happen but as there were no clothes there was no identification and he most likely would not be found. The sea was relentlessly reclaiming the wreck as weak dawn gave way to full light the boat and body would be sleeping together under tons of sand. He had walked to the beach from what he called a molester van after allowing his cherry to be popped by his drug dealer. The X fed to him was pure enough that the humping had been intensely pleasurable.and the promise of yet more free heroin had lured him naked to the beach for a swim. The stormy night and the discovery of the remains of the King Philip had excited them both and they sat naked side by side on of the boat's remains. The drug dealer grabbed him, deeply kissed him and pro-offered the lines from his hand, the man, ever glad of a free line or two inhaled greedily the mixture of special K and heroin. The burn in his nose had barely ceased when he fell forward from what had been the port side of the ship into tide pool of seawater and swirling sand. He was paralyzed by the drug cocktail and was unable pull himself up out of the half foot of icy water. The drug dealer aided the angel of death in its flight by standing on his victims neck and back within three minutes the man had drowned.
An end place fitting as scene of death, the Clipper ship King Phillip had been transporting a cargo of Pigeon feces for fertilizer when shipwrecked in 1878 and the dead man, like all addicts had become a flightless Pigeon.
The naked body of a white man, face-down, lie partially buried in a swirling tide-pool of seawater and sand within the ribs of the boat. The crashing waves of a fall storm recently exposed the remains of the once proud King Philip and the returning tides were quick returning.. The body, the object of the birds, was not a preserved crew member exposed with the retreat of the sand entombing the ship but that of a white man in his late 20's, his marble white skin contrasting sharply with the dirty sand and blackness of the petrified wood of the boat. The body was partially buried in the wet sand and appeared save for its face down position much like a weekend beach goer might. One who had buried himself to the waist to amuse his kids. Its rigidity in repose belied any such idea. The birds saw a meal, the largest of them landed on the bodies buttocks and in a quick motion tore into the fleshy left buttocks and flew away. It new nothing of the man, that he had a wife who would begin to worry about his being gone in a few hours, nor about the drunk janie who having prepared herself so carefully, wearing the sheerest nightie she owned and who drank a bottle of Vodka when she decided he had stood her up, nor of his other friends who continued to call his cellphone tossed into the seagrass in the Sandunes, he was missing another mindless house party full of an endless parade of Cal Fire employees and they needed him to continue the party. They called and called, the messages buzzing on, the battery wearing down until the cell went silent. The voice-mail had been filled hours ago by dozens of calls from a frightened former john named Addige who had overheard a drug dealer at a sex club stonily talk of a gay for pay hooker having been overdosed by another drug dealer who had provided him pure white heroin mixed with special K rather than the usual mix of heroin and fluff.
Few others knew of his existence and two who did had caused the overdose to occur. Fewer still would mourn the man, he was not a very sympathetic individual. His wife would, not so much out of marital happiness, for there had been little of that, but out love of the material life they had together. Her life had been so unrelentingly hard and deprived before he married her that his end meant the end of that world and as no other path would be open to her, a room in a shared rented mobile home trailer park on Santa Rosa Avenue would be her next home. There were no children to ask why daddy how drowned in San Francisco 90 miles from home in Santa Rosa and the life of the junkie was such that if his absence was noted at all it would be with relief by many as he'd become the daily train wreck to be avoided.
That might happen but as there were no clothes there was no identification and he most likely would not be found. The sea was relentlessly reclaiming the wreck as weak dawn gave way to full light the boat and body would be sleeping together under tons of sand. He had walked to the beach from what he called a molester van after allowing his cherry to be popped by his drug dealer. The X fed to him was pure enough that the humping had been intensely pleasurable.and the promise of yet more free heroin had lured him naked to the beach for a swim. The stormy night and the discovery of the remains of the King Philip had excited them both and they sat naked side by side on of the boat's remains. The drug dealer grabbed him, deeply kissed him and pro-offered the lines from his hand, the man, ever glad of a free line or two inhaled greedily the mixture of special K and heroin. The burn in his nose had barely ceased when he fell forward from what had been the port side of the ship into tide pool of seawater and swirling sand. He was paralyzed by the drug cocktail and was unable pull himself up out of the half foot of icy water. The drug dealer aided the angel of death in its flight by standing on his victims neck and back within three minutes the man had drowned.
An end place fitting as scene of death, the Clipper ship King Phillip had been transporting a cargo of Pigeon feces for fertilizer when shipwrecked in 1878 and the dead man, like all addicts had become a flightless Pigeon.
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