AT 21 iii When I was twenty-one, I had a desire in my consciousness that was like a great knife cutting through the swaths of yellow gleaming grain; it was to go to the city for the gain of meeting some interesting people, and in some instances, to count for something in their lives. In a town of 2500 people, my desire became a reality when I discovered that it was environment that made for the interesting types, and not culture or education. During this period of enlightenment I met a distinguished pedagogue and concert-pianist; a young girl of conflicting and powerful emotions; a negro poetess and lyceum-reader, a brilliant and deep-souled Irish priest; a country woman of ragged dress who raised beautiful Angora kittens to sell and a talkative Chinese parrot; a snappy insurance woman who liked art and had “ideas”; a black-eyed Scotch storekeeper; a weird German woman of large proportions who had seen “better days”; and a personality conductor of a local theatre who sings popular songs with gestures of meaning. All these I treasured for a future book of local types, in a town of 2500, and far from the city. It is these types that make contemporary fiction the engrossing story it is; the Jewish dry-goods merchants, becoming Americanized, the girl-flames of the stage; the Abie’s Irish roses; the Al Smith men raising from the slums to expensive homes on main thoroughfares; the mellow Selina-heroines; the lyric writing ditch-diggers; and the Elsie Janis-mimickers. Meeting such people would turn life into a doubly interesting drama, and it is this interest, and not wealth or renown, which will make as gay or bitter at forty and even sixty. -Chal
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 02:08:36 +0000
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