The Great American Novel by Philip Roth Read Free Book Online

he claimed afterwards; I myself didn’t know what he was carrying on about when he shouted up at the bird, “You can’t quoth that to me and get away with it, you sea gull son of a bitch!”
    â€œNevermore!” the gull repeated, to hear Hem tell it later. “Nevermore!”
    Hem raced down to the cabin but when he returned with his pistol the gull was gone.
    â€œI ought to use it on myself,” said Papa. “And if that bastard sea gull is right, I will.”
    Here he stumbled wildly over the deck, stepping blindly across the slit, and leaned over the side to watch his shadow in the water … “Frederico,” he called.
    â€œHem.”
    â€œOh, Frederico; it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day—very much such a sweetness as this—I wrote my first story—a boy-reporter of nineteen! Eighteen—eighteen—eighteen years ago!—ago! Eighteen years of continual writing! eighteen years of privation, and peril, and stormtime! eighteen years on the pitiless sea! for eighteen years has Papa forsaken the peaceful land, for eighteen years to make war on the horrors of the deep! When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a novelist’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!—when I think of all this; only half-suspected … I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise! God! God! God!—crack my heart—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! Close! Stand close to me, Frederico; let me look into a human eye. The Great American Novel. Why should Hemingway give chase to the Great American Novel?”
    â€œGood question, Papa. Keep it up and it’s going to drive you nuts.”
    â€œWhat is it, Frederico, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Papa, Papa? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this writing arm?” he asked, raising the pistol to his head.
    â€œAll right, Hem, that’s enough now,” I said. “You don’t even sound like yourself. A book is a book, no more. Who would want to kill himself over a novel?”
    â€œWhat then?” said Papa, and turned to look at the decked slit. It was to her he said sardonically, “A whale? A woman?”
    Only it wasn’t the same kid who had boarded with us at dawn that morning who answered him. A few hours with a man like Hem had changed her forever, as it changed us all. That’s what a great writer can do to people.
    â€œWouldn’t it be pretty to think so?” snorted the slit.
    End of story, nearly. As I did not want to let him out of my sight in that murderous mood, I brought Hem along with me to see the Mundys take their first workout in a week. John Baal, the big bad first-baseman the sentimentalists used to try to dignify by calling him “Rabelaisian “—the first two syllables would have sufficed—was in the cage, lofting long fly balls out toward a flock of pelicans who were cruising in deep center. “I’m going to get me one of them big-mouthed cocksuckers yet,” said John, and sure enough, after fifteen minutes of trying, he did. Pelican must have mistaken the baseball for something good to eat, a flying fish I suppose, because he went soaring straight up after one John had hit like a shot and hauled it in while it was still on the rise. When I went to the telegraph office that night to file my story, Papa was still with me, muttering