Major Riddell's amateur hour

JOHN RIDDELL

Sixty minutes, by the gong, during which a quartet of our lovable young literary aspirants disport themselves on the Major's popular radio program

Aa-all right. Aa-aaa-aall right.

Ahahahaha. All right, folks. Here we have the results of last week's balloting. First choice . . . first choice was Mamie McAnkle, Mamie McAnkle, the Flatbush Nightingale, of 121 Wilgus Avenue, Brooklyn, who sang "My Kid". Mamie received 5127 votes, and she has just joined l nit Number Thirteen, now playing in Metuchen, New Jersey. (Applause.) And now the finger of opportunity casts her dice again upon the stage of life, and once more the wheel of Fortune spins, around and round she goes, and where she stops nobody cares. Aha. First on our program tonight is Johnuh—

O'Hara. John O'Hara.

Where do you live,

John?

1 live in New York, Major.

Ah, yes. New York. Well, 1 have some very pleasant memories of New York. New York has always been like a home to me. I used to appear often at the old Capitol Theater on—now, don't tell me, Graham—ah, yes, Broadway. New York, city of happiness, prosperity and friendliness, our hats are oil to you. (Applause.) Ah! What do \ ou do, John?

I write books, Major.

What kind of books?

Oh, you know, modern speakeasy stuff, bike Appointment in Samarra and Butterfield 8.

Are they good books, John?

Well, they fool the critics.

Ahahaha! (Studio laughter.) Well, that's fine, John. That's what critics are for. Aha! And what are you planning to do when you grow up?

Fm saving up my money to go to college, Major. 1 always wanted to be a college boy. I want to go to A ale sometime, and get it over with.

Well, that's a very worthy ambition, John. I'm for you, and I'm sure we ll all be glad when you write enough books so you can stop and go to college instead. And now what are you going to do for us here tonight?

I m going to give my imitations.

What do you imitate, as a rule, John?

Usually I imitate Hemingway; four

drunks in a Pullman smoker; a sophomore from New Haven; and F. Scott Fitzgerald out of one corner of my mouth.

Well, that's quite an order, John, ahahaha! (Studio laughter.) All right, son, go ahead. . . .

■ MR. O'HARA: "It was the kind of despair that you had known perhaps for three hundred and ten pages. In general the cause of your despair was remorse: because you knew that whatever she was going to do next would not be any good either. She just went on.

"She got out of bed, pulling the drawstring of the pajamas she was wearing, and she was unsteady and her body was pretty drunk, but she walked all around the room and could not remember whose pajamas she had been wearing. There was a plain oak desk and a leather Morris chair and in one corner of the room there was a large banner on the wall with 'YALE' on it and a photograph of an oarsman in a cotton shirt with a small 'Y' over the heart. On the desk was an envelope with her name 'Gloria' and she opened the flap and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. 'I wonder where he is?' she said, and she poured herself a drink from a bottle of Scotch on the desk, because she was one of the world's heaviest drinkers. Then she put on her panties and a black hat and one silk stocking and she went down the hall and opened the door of the next room. There was a plain oak desk and a leather Morris chair and a large banner on the wall with 'YALE' on it and a photograph of a baseball player with a small 'Y' on his shirt. She opened an envelope on the desk with her name 'Gloria on it and took out a ten-dollar bill. 'I wonder where he is?' she said, and she poured herself a drink from a bottle of Scotch on the desk, and she went down the hall and opened the door of the next room. There was a plain oak desk and a leather Morris chair and a large banner with 'YALE" on it and a photograph of eleven football players with 'Y's' on their jerseys. She opened the envelope on the desk with her name 'Gloria' and took out eleven ten-dollar bills. 'I wonder where they are?' she said, and she poured herself eleven drinks from a bottle of Scotch on the desk, and she went down the hall to the next room, which had a large banner with 'YALE on it and a photograph of the Yale cross-country team. \I wonder where everybody is?' she asked a scrubwoman in the hall, counting a sheaf of ten-dollar bills. 'I wonder where I am myself?'

" 'You're in Harkness Hall,' replied the scrubwoman, w i t h o u t even bothering to change her style, 'but everybody else cleared out early this morning. Every damned student at Yale cleared out. They said you could have Yale. They said they would phone you Tuesday or Wednesday.

" 'Why, I ll spit in their eye,' she said. 'The dirty low-down sons of-' "

Bong!

Aa-aall right. Aa-aaa-aall right. I'm sorry, John. Next time try to find something worth while to write about, John. All right, folks. Next on our program . . . next on our program is Thomas—uh—Thomas Wolfe. Thomas Wolfe. Where were you born, Thomas?

Asheville, North Carolina, Major.

Ah, yes. Asheville. Asheville has always been like a home to me. Asheville, the city of happiness, prosperity, friendliness and good will—

You wouldn't think so if you went back there after writing Of Time and the River, Major.

Ahahaha! (Studio laughter.) Well, what do you do, Thomas?

I'm a literary strong man.

Physically speaking? (Studio laughter.)

That's right, Major. I'm a weight-lifter. I can juggle a million words without even stopping for breath. I can loss off a 912page novel with my bare hands. I bet I could lift the entire works of Dreiser, Roget's Thesaurus and Anthony Adverse, in mv teeth. I'm colossal, Major, in a small way. And what are you going to lift for us tonight. Thomas?

I thought I would lake up myself, Major, as usual. . . .

MR. WOLFE: "Eugene strode in futile anger and despair and wild exuberance, brusquely, impetuously, tamelessly, desperately (rash, &c., 863) ; orgiastically, volcanically, like a volcano; a toute out- ranee (F.) ; 'blown with restless violence round the pendant world (Measure for Measure), attending upon all the angry and despairing and wildly exuberant fury of dark time, the unspeakable anguish, grief and desperation of a million empty, blind, extravagant words, in futile anger and despair and wild exuberance he strode from die demented, drunken, carnal, kaleidoscopic revel, orgy (drunkenness, &c., 959) : high old time (colloq.), full of wild exuberance and despair and anger, fearing the furious irremediable confusion of his huge unrest, his desperate and unceasing flight as he strode in futile anger and despair and wild exub-"

Bong!

I'm sorry, Thomas, but I think that is where we came in. All right, folks. Aa-aaaaall light! Remember that the phone in New York is Spring 3100 or your nearest precinct station. Aha. Well. Next . . . next we have William—uh—Syrian. What? Saroyan. William Saroyan. Aha. William's application says he is twenty-six years old, a contortionist, and his ambition is to— uh—to be alive. Hmm. Well, now, William, that is a nice future for a young man to choose. Aha. (Studio laughter.) Where were you born, William?

San Francisco, Major. Look quick how 1 can juggle. Clenched teeth, fog, horizontal laughter and mirth, much gliding of main warm lizards, quick somebody what have I done with my pencil, the tap-dancing of fate, chocolate blanc mange, Free Mooney, conversation with an umbrella—

Uh. Just a moment, William. A-huh. What was I saying? Oh, yes. San Francisco. San Francisco has always been like home to me. San Francisco, city of happiness, prosper—

Slick as a green onion to the teeth, Schubert's unfinished Symphony, swimming, the red and the purple, He flies through the air with seventy thousand Assyrians, French fried potatoes, ABC, always the seeond turn to the right, where are my roller skates? Yes, Queen Mary's hat. thinking, It is only when we are alive that we are dead, eternity is life, I think I will drop the penny in a slot and weigh myself—

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\ll right. Aa-aall right. William. Uh. Phew. Just a minute, W illiam, please, I've sort of lost my—l h. Where was I? Uh. Tell me, W illiam what do you—

Someone who isn't a writer begins to want to be a writer and by the time he is a writer he has ceased to write because he has not written anything and he has stopped writing what he would write if he had not written anything at all and all the critics say lie is a writer, and Christopher Motley and Lewis Gannett and of course Harry Hansen, all the critics tell him the things he did not write arc the things that lie has written, and they say his writing is better than what he wrote.

I h. 1 see. William. Yes, of course. \haha. (Polite studio laughter.) Yes. Well. William, let me see. Uh where was I. Graham?—oh yes. I h. What are you planning to do tonight for—

MR. SAROYAN: "He (the living) dressed and shaved, grinning at his style iii the mirror. Very unhandsome, he -aid; where is my theme? (lie had but one.) Life, and wanting to be alive, and to live, and not to be dead. Live like life, his mind sang, laugh like hell, write like Zane Grey or Hemingway {Heath in the Ajternoon, Heath in the. Great War, Heath Also Rises, Heath in Africa) would write. It is good to be living when you are alive, and the Communists—but they need to live. How hungry they are, how they need to write to eat to live, to eat to live to write. 1 have a faint idea what it is to be alive. (Look, I have a pin. Ouch!

I am alive.) That, and riding a bicycle. I hope sometime to write a great philosophical work on bicycles, something on the order of Heath on a Bicycle by Ernest Hemingway

Who the lousy hell is talking about Hemingway?

Bong, bong, bong!!!

Never mind that damn gong. Major. 1 want to know what lousy damn hell bastard here is trying to imitate Hemingway. I can imitate Hemingway better than any hell damn lousy bastard—

All right. Aa-aaa-aall right! Wait a minute, boys. Please. After all. young man, you have no right to come up on the platform here and interrupt this radio program. Who are you?

I'm Hemingway.

Oh. Ah. Well, now, really, Ernest. aJialia, you don't belong to ibis amateur program, you know. You're not an amateur.

Who the hell says I'm not an amateur?

But, Ernest—

1 guess you wouldn't say I'm not an amateur, Major, if you read those pieces T do each month for Esquire.

But, really. Ernest—

Ernest the Pooh. POH. Poor Old Hemingway. Get it. Major? Tee hee, Graham. That's from Green llills of Ajrica, Major.

But Ernest, you see, you couldn't be an amateur after all those books you've—

'tim wouldn't say that if yon saw all those God damn hell lousy bastard four-letter words I use, Major. Nobody but an amateur would keep using fourletter words like that, would they? Nobody would write great prose like 1 do sometimes. Major, and then spoil it with a lot of four-letter words. Sure I'm an amateur. I'm a professional amateur. I'm Peter Pan. I never grow up. Writers grow up. and they are very respectable, and they do not use the words that people have always used in speech. Emerson, Hawthorne, Whittier, and Company. They were all very respectable, and you would not gather that they had bodies. 1 have a body. and I use the words that survive in language, the words people have always used. I wonder which will last longer. Emerson and Hawthorne and Whittier and Company, or Hemingway? Hell, let's all have a gimlet. Let's go shoot something. Let us kill some large heav\ animals that bleed excitingly. Let us kill some antelope and reedbuck and kudu. Kudu bleed excitingly when you kill them, and they fall bleeding, and their guts tumble out and they race obscenely loping, full belly-dragging, tearing at their bloody guts—

Bong!

Aa-aall right, aaa-aaa-aaall right, folks. You can come back now, folks. Ernest won't hurt you. lie just beats on his chest like that because it reassures him. Ahahaha. (Uneasy laughter.) All right, folks. And now we are about to hear the results of this week's balloting. The returns have been coming in by telephone, and now we have a bulletin to tell us who has been chosen the most complete amateur, thank you, Graham. Ah . . . uh. The first choice . . . the first choice is—uh. Graham, Graham, are you sure there isn't some —I mean, are these the correct What? Well, folks, it seems the first choice is myself. Ahahahaha . . . ahahaha . . . ahull. . . .

Bong!