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The cover image has been modified and is placed in the public domain.

THE
SEVEN
STAIRS

Stuart Brent

THE

Houghton Mifflin Company Boston

SEVEN

The Riverside Press Cambridge

STAIRS

Nineteen Sixty-Two

First Printing

Copyright © 1962 by Stuart Brent

All rights reserved including the right

to reproduce this book or parts thereof

in any form

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-8119

The quotation on pages 89 and 90 is from The

Literary Situation by Malcolm Cowley. Copyright

1954 by Malcolm Cowley. Reprinted by permission

of the Viking Press, Inc.

The Riverside Press

Cambridge · Massachusetts

Printed in the U.S.A.

• To
• my
• mother
• and
• father

Acknowledgments

In a real sense, this book is an acknowledgment to all who have had a part in shaping my life and being. Since their names appear only incidentally and accidentally—if at all—in the course of the text, I hope with all my heart that they will accept this collective note of gratitude for all their help.

In particular, however, I wish to mention Hardwick Moseley for his encouragement when the going was rough; Milton Gilbert who made the Seven Stairs possible in the first place; Henry Dry, one of the few men I know who understand the meaning of forbearance; Goldie and Kalmin Levin (Jennie’s mother and father) for their devotion and unfailing help; Robert Parrish for his blue penciling; and Hope, who after giving birth to our son, Joseph, tenderly cared for the unstrung father through the pangs of giving birth to The Seven Stairs.

S. B.

Contents

THE

SEVEN

STAIRS

1
And Nobody Came

I might as well tell you what this book is about.

Years ago I started to write a memoir about a young fellow who wanted to be a book dealer and how he made out. I tore it up when I discovered the subject had already been covered by a humorist named Will Cuppy in a book called, How to Become Extinct.

Now I’m not so sure. I’m still around in my middle-aged obsolescence and all about us the young are withering on the vine. Civilization may beat me yet in achieving the state of the dodo. The tragedy is that so few seem to know or really believe it. Maybe there just isn’t enough innocence left to join with the howl of the stricken book dealer upon barging into the trap. Not just a howl of self-pity, but the yap of the human spirit determined to assert itself no matter what. There’s some juice in that spirit yet, or there would be no point in submitting the following pages as supporting evidence—hopefully, or bitterly, or both.

Let there be no doubt about my original qualifications for the role of Candide. With three hundred dollars worth of books (barely enough to fill five shelves), a used record player, and some old recordings (left in my apartment when I went into the army and still there upon my return), I opened the Seven Stairs Book and Record Shop on the Near North Side of Chicago.

The shop was located in one of the old brownstone, converted residences still remaining on Rush Street—a fashionable townhouse district in the era after the Great Chicago Fire, now the kind of a district into which fashionable townhouses inevitably decline. One had to climb a short flight of stairs above an English basement (I thought there were seven steps—in reality there were eight), pass through a short, dark hall, and unlock a door with a dime store skeleton key before entering finally into the prospective shop. It was mid-August of 1946 when I first stood there in the barren room. The sun had beaten in all day and I gasped for air; and gasping, I stood wondering if this was to be the beginning of a new life and an end to the hit-or-miss of neither success nor failure that summed up my career to the moment.

It all fitted my mood perfectly: the holes in the plaster, the ripped molding, the 1890 light fixture that hung by blackened chains from the ceiling, the wood-burning fireplace, the worn floor, the general air of decay lurking in every corner. Long before the scene registered fully upon my mind, it had entered into my emotions. I saw everything and forgave everything. It could all be repaired, painted, cleaned—set right with a little work. I saw the little room filled with books and records, a fire going, and myself in a velvet jacket, seated behind a desk, being charming and gracious to everyone who came in.

I saw success, excitement, adventure, in the world I loved—the world of books and music. I saw fine people coming and going—beautiful women and handsome men. I saw myself surrounded by warmth, friendship and good feeling, playing my favorite recordings all day, telling my favorite stories, finding myself.

I ran my fingers over the mantelpiece. “I want this room,” I said to myself. “I want it.”

I built shelves to the ceiling and bought all the books I could buy. There was no money left to buy the velvet jacket. Every morning I opened the store bright and early. Every night I closed very late. And no one came to visit me. Morning, noon, and night it was the same. I was alone with my books and my music. Everything was so bright, so shiny, so clean. And the books! There were not very many, but they were all so good! Still nobody came.

How do you go about getting people to buy books? I didn’t know. I had been a teacher before the war. My father was not a business man either, nor his father. No one in my family knew anything about business. I knew the very least.

Every morning I walked into the shop freshly determined: today I will sell a book! I hurried with my housekeeping. And then, what to do? Phone a friend or a relative. I couldn’t think of a relative who read or a friend who wouldn’t see through the thin disguise of my casual greeting and understand the ulterior purpose of my call.

One late afternoon it happened. One of the beautiful people I had dreamed about came in.

She stood on the threshold, apparently debating whether it was safe to venture further. “Is this a bookstore?” she said.

“Please come in,” I said. “It’s a bookshop.”

She was solidly built and had a round face above a heavy neck with the fat comfortably overlapping the collar of her white dress. Her legs were sturdy, her feet were spread in a firm stance, she was fat and strong and daring.

“Do you have a copy of Peace of Mind?” said my daring first customer.

Everyone was reading the rabbi’s book that summer—except me. It was a bestseller; naturally I wouldn’t touch it. But here was a customer!

“Lady,” I said, opening my business career on a note of total capitulation, “if you’ll wait here a moment, I’ll get the book for you.” She nodded.

“Please,” I added, running out the door.

I sprinted four blocks to A. C. McClurg’s, the wholesaler from whom I bought my original three hundred dollars’ worth of books, and bought a single copy of Peace of Mind for $1.62. Then I ran back to complete my first sale for $2.50.

The realization overwhelmed me that I was totally unprepared to sell a book. I had no bags or wrapping paper. I had no cash register or even a cigar box. It seemed highly improper to accept money and then reach into my pocket for change. It was a long time, in fact, before I could get over the embarrassment of taking anyone’s money at all. I found it very upsetting.

2
“Read Your Lease. Goodbye.”

The near North Side of Chicago is a Greenwich Village, a slum, and a night life strip bordered by the commerce of Michigan Boulevard and the Gold Coast homes and apartments of the wealthy.

Into a narrow trough between the down-and-out losers of Clark Street and the luxurious livers of Lake Shore Drive flows a stream of life that has no direction, organization, or established pattern. Here are attracted the inner-directed ones struggling with their own visions, along with the hangers-on, the disenchanted and emotionally bankrupt. It is a haven for the broken soul as well as the earnest and rebellious. The drug addict, the petty thief, the sex deviant and the alcoholic are generously mixed in among the sincere and aspiring. There are the dislocated wealthy, the connivers and parasites, abortionists and pimps. There are call girls and crowds of visiting firemen, second hand clothing stores and smart shops, pawn brokers and art supply stores.

Gertrude Stein once wrote about Picasso’s reply to a young man who was seeking advice on the best location for opening a Parisian bookstore: “I would just find a place and start selling books.” Well, I found a place, uniquely unfavored as a crossroads of commerce (during the day, virtually no one was on the street), but teeming with the malcontents, the broken, the battered—the flotsam and jetsam of urban life, along with inspired or aspiring prophets, musicians, artists, and writers. What more could one ask?

The original dimensions of the Seven Stairs were fifteen feet by nine feet. A single bay window looked onto Rush Street. At the other end of the room stood a small sink. The bathroom was on the second floor and seldom worked. Three ashcans on the sidewalk by my window served the building for garbage disposal. Occasionally the city emptied them.

Across the hall was a hat shop—a blind for a call girl establishment. The woman who ran it was actually a hat maker and made hats for her girls. She was a heavy woman with enormous breasts, who wore immense earrings, always dressed in black silk, and changed her hair dye regularly: red, jet black, once silver-grey. She had a small, bow-shaped mouth, garishly painted, and in the four years I knew her an improper word never passed her lips. She was filled with commiseration for cats, at least a dozen of which wandered in and out of the hall daily. Once in a while, she would buy a book, always with a fifty dollar bill, and then was very apologetic for the inconvenience when I had to run to the drug store for change.

Behind my shop was another studio occupied by a charming hypochondriacal ballet dancer and a boy friend who was the tallest, ugliest man I had ever encountered. Above were two more studios, occupied[occupied] by a painter and a girl who wrote poetry. There were also two studios on the third floor, but to this day I have no idea who was there. A bricklayer lived in the basement with his odd and rather pretty daughter, who had bad teeth, a nervous tic, and huge, burning black eyes.

Over this assortment of humanity ruled an evil king who in my reasoned opinion was in fact Mephistopheles in the guise of a landlord. His life had its meaning in seeing that the innocent were punished, that neighbors were aroused to hate and distrust one another, and that needless disaster always threatened his subjects and often befell them.

It was amazing how he could achieve his devilish ends by the simple incantation, “Read your lease. Goodbye.” This was his message, whether in the inevitable phone call when you were a day late with the rent, or in answer to your call for help when the fuses in the basement blew or when on a bitter February night the sink broke and the shop began floating away.

The sink affair occurred at a point when my business had developed to the extent of a few regular accounts and come to a quiet stalemate. Once these faithful customers had come in, I was through for the month. I could scarcely stand the empty hours waiting for someone to talk with. It was bitter February, cold enough to keep any sensible soul off the streets. I sat before the fire, filled with self-pity, my doomed life stretching hopelessly before me. Finally I bestirred myself—and this was my undoing.

All I did was throw a carton up to a shelf—a sort of basketball toss that missed. The box hit the sink, tipped off, and, incredibly, broke an aged lead water pipe. To my horror, water began gushing over the floor. I tried to stuff a towel into the pipe. No good. My beautiful shop! All the beautiful books! Ruin!

Still holding the towel to the pipe with one hand, I dialed my father’s telephone number. He was a sound man concerning the mechanical world.

“Do you have a broom?” he said. “All right, cut it in two and make a plug for the pipe. Then call your landlord.”

I went to work frantically. All the time water was pouring across the floor. Finally I managed to whittle a temporary plug. Then I phoned the landlord.

He inquired of my business success.

“Please,” I said. “The pipe to the sink has broken. My store will be ruined. Where is the shut-off?”

“I don’t know where the shut-off is,” he said. “You are responsible. Read your lease. Goodbye.”

I turned to the City Water Department next. By the time I explained to them what had happened and they examined their charts and discovered where the cut-offs might be located, I was standing in an inch of water.

Someone would be over, I was assured. But not right away. In a few hours perhaps. All the men were out on emergencies. However, I could try to find the cut-offs myself. They were outside near the street lamp about a foot from the curb.

I stuck my head out the door. It was about ten degrees above zero, and the ground along the curbing was covered with at least five inches of ice and snow. What to do? And all the time, more water was bubbling over the broom handle and splashing onto the floor.

Down at the corner there was a drug store owned by a man of infinite patience and understanding. No human act was beyond his comprehension or forgiveness, and he was always ready to help in moments of crisis. If a girl needed help, our man at the drug store was there. If she needed work, legitimate or otherwise, he could find the spot for her. If a man needed to make a touch, he could get it without interest. Our druggist was no fence or law breaker—but he was an answering service, a father confessor, and an unlikely guardian angel. I ran to him with my trouble.

He looked at me with his sleepy eyes, and, his soft lips forming quiet assurances, came up with a shovel, an ax, and a pail of hot water.

The problem was where to dig. I went at it blindly, saying to myself: “Shovel. Shovel. Die if you must. But shovel.”

When I had gotten an area of snow removed, I poured water over the ice and went at it with the ax. Finally I struck the top of the box containing the cut-offs and managed to pry open the lid. There were two knobs in the box, and having no idea which one related to my store, I turned them both shut.

After returning the hardware to the drug store, I sloshed back into my inundated establishment and began sweeping the water out with what was left of the broom. Working like a madman, I got most of the water out into the hall, out the door, and over the stairs, where it froze instantaneously. Never mind—tomorrow I will chop the ice away and all will be well.

By this time, my strength was exhausted and the shop was nearly as cold as the outdoors. I felt as though I had survived some kind of monstrous test. I dumped logs on the fire, waited until they were ablaze, then stripped off my wet shoes and socks and wrapped my frozen feet in my coat.

I was sure I had caught pneumonia. I wouldn’t be able to open the store for weeks. The few accounts I had would surely be lost. It was the end of everything. How good it would be if only death would come now, while there was yet a little warmth to taste in a world which certainly wanted nothing of my kind.

Out of my reverie, I heard a bitter cry. It came from outside near my door. I jumped up and looked down the hall. Two men in evening dress were wrestling on the stairs. The screaming and cursing were awful. At last they scrambled up and started toward me.

“You son of a bitch,” one of them cried. “I’ll kill you!” His fall on the stairs had damaged his suit. Bits of ice had collected about his long nose, a few even glistened in his moustache. His hair practically stood on end. Snow and ice covered his jacket and patched his trousers. His black tie was crooked and his dress shirt sodden. The other fellow stared fiercely at me, restraining his partner with one hand, the other balled into a fist, threatening me. “Who put you up to this? Why do you want to ruin our business? You mother-raping bastard, I’ll cut your throat!” He took a step forward. I stepped back.

“Tell us or we’ll kill you here and now.”

I had never seen these men before in my life. As I retreated toward my desk, they swept the books off it onto the wet floor. They sat on the desk and stared at me, and everything became very quiet.

They were proprietors of the restaurant in the corner building, also owned by my landlord. In shutting off the water, I had turned off theirs, too. They also had called the landlord, and he told them that I was undoubtedly responsible. But he failed to tell them what had been happening to me.

Now I showed them the broken pipe, the floor still wet in spots, my hands which were raw and bruised. I picked up the books from the floor and took off the wet dust jackets. Here goes my profit for a week, I thought. I could tell their anger had cooled. Instead of being cruel, they looked almost contrite. I went outside again in my wet shoes and socks and coat and turned one of the shut-off keys. Naturally it was the wrong one. The restaurant man pounded at the window to attract my attention. I reversed my switches and restored their precious water.

I remained in the shop a while, too exhausted and heartbroken to leave. Where now, little man? I didn’t know. But I resolved never to call my landlord again—no matter what.

It was a fruitless resolve. One morning two inspectors from the Fire Department paid me a visit.

“Are those your logs under the stairs?” one of them asked.

“Those are my logs,” I said. “But they are not under the stairs. They are by a stone wall near the stairs.”

“That makes no difference. It’s a fire hazard and someone has filed a complaint. Get the logs out by tomorrow or we’ll close you up.”

I remembered my landlord’s visit a week earlier. He had commented that I had a good pile of logs which should make a warm fire. He twirled his cane and looked at me from cat-grey eyes, set in a flabby yellow face crushed in a thousand wrinkles. As he minced about on his tiny feet, encased in patent leather pumps, I expected any moment to see the walls part or the ceiling open for his exit. When he left in the normal way, wishing me good luck and great success, I was sure he doffed his black homburg to me. Almost sure.

Now I threw my resolutions to the wind and phoned him, determined to take the offensive at any cost.

“Why did you call those fire inspectors?” I demanded. “Couldn’t you have told me if I was breaking an ordinance?”

The more my voice rose, the more he chuckled.

Not long afterward a fat, tobacco chewing sloven entered the shop and stood looking around carefully, swaying on the balls of his feet. I thought he might be a tout, lost on his way to a bookie.

“Where does this wire go?” he finally asked.

“Go?” I said. “Who cares?”

“Don’t get snotty with me, buddy,” he said. “I’m going to close you up. I’m the city electrical inspector and we’ve got a complaint that your wiring is a hazard to the building.”

He continued to stand in the middle of the floor, his hands locked behind his back, swaying back and forth like the old Jews on High Holidays in the Synagogue.

When he had gone, I called my landlord and cried, “Listen, you are killing me with inspection. Wish me bad luck and bankruptcy and leave me alone!”

Of course I had to get an electrical contractor, whose workmen tore the shop to pieces, removed perfectly good wiring, and replaced it.

A week later a tall man in a Brooks Brothers suit and carrying an attaché case came to collect the bill for $375.00. His smugness was so overwhelming that I turned and walked away from him. As I moved along, inspecting my bookshelves, he followed closely behind. I could see myself walking down Rush Street, going to dinner, going home, with this persistent, immaculate young man silently in attendance. Suddenly, turning, I stepped squarely on his polished shoes.

Excusing myself, I said, “You know, the man to pay you for this work is my landlord. If the wiring was faulty between the walls, obviously I have nothing to do with it. I’ll call him up. You can talk with him.”

My landlord must have been surprised at my cheery voice. “I have an interesting gentleman here who wants to talk with you,” I said. “He is a genius. The work he did for you in the installation of BX wires between the walls is something to be seen to be appreciated. You’ll marvel at its beauty. Here he is.”

I handed over the receiver. The storm of words coming from the other end nearly blew the young man off his feet. I couldn’t contain my laughter. I lurched over to a wall, holding my guts and laughing till I cried. It was marvelous. Wonderful. I had reversed the tables at last.

Naturally, I paid the bill. My landlord had new electrical outlets, but our relations were different. He continued to take advantage of me, but not any longer under the guise of wishing me “good luck” or a “great success.”

My landlord helped me. He taught me to be on guard. He taught me that it is, in fact, cold outside. He put me on trial—rather like K in Kafka’s The Trial. I could not just go running for help when trouble came. I could no longer retreat into the fantasy of pretending that running a bookstore was not a business. He taught me that the world requires people to take abuse, lying, cheating, duplicity—and outlast them.

Now when my landlord came to visit me, it was on an entirely new emotional basis. Nothing was different in appearance, yet in feeling everything was changed because I was no longer afraid. When he cheated me now, it was only a cheap triumph for him. I was free because I had become inwardly secure. I did not beat the Devil, but I knew positively that the Devil exists, that evil is real. Let him do his worst—his absolute worst—so long as you can handle yourself, he cannot ultimately triumph. Where K failed in The Trial was in his emotional inability to handle his threatened ego.

K’s trial is allegorical. So was my landlord. Only with the imagination can we see through into what is real. My landlord was one of the disguises of evil. I know now that had I let him throw me, I could never have withstood the trials of reality that were to come.

3
How to Get Started
in the Book Business

I had decided to become a bookseller because I loved good books. I assumed there must be many others who shared a love for reading and that I could minister to their needs. I thought of this as a calling. It never occurred to me to investigate bookselling as a business.

Had I done so, I should have learned that eighty percent of all the hardcover books purchased across the counter in America are sold by twenty booksellers. If I had been given the facts and sat down with pencil and paper, I could have discovered that to earn a living and continue to build the kind of inventory that would make it possible to go on selling, I would need to have an annual gross in the neighborhood of $100,000!

Even if I had had the facts in hand, they would not have deterred me. If vows of poverty were necessary, I was ready to take them. And I refused to be distressed by the expressions on people’s faces when I confided that I was about to make a living selling books. Sell freight, yes. Sell bonds or stocks or insurance, certainly. Sell pots and pans. But books!

And I was not only going to sell books—I was going to sell real books: those that dealt seriously and truly with the spirit of man.

I had finished cleaning and decorating my little shop before it dawned on me that I did not know how to go about the next step: getting a stock of books and records to sell. A study of the classified telephone directory revealed the names of very few publishers that sounded at all familiar. Was it possible there were no publishers in Chicago? If that were the case, would I have to go to New York?

There was a telephone listing for Little, Brown and Company, so I called them. The lady there said she would be glad to see me. She proved to be very kind and very disillusioning.

“No,” she said, “the book business is not easy, and your location is bad. No, the big publishers will not sell to you direct because your account is too small. No, we at Little, Brown won’t either. If I were you, I’d forget the whole idea and go back to teaching.”

Everything was No. But she did tell me where I could buy books of all publishers wholesale, and that was the information I wanted. I hastened to A. C. McClurg’s and presented myself to the credit manager.

The fact that I had a shop, nicely decorated, did not seem to qualify me for instant credit. First I would have to fill out an application and await the results of an investigation. In the meantime if I wanted books, I could buy them for cash.

“All right,” I said. “I want to buy three hundred dollars worth of books.”

“That isn’t very much,” the man said. “How big is your store?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s fifteen feet long and nine feet wide, and I’m going to carry records, too.”

He shook his head and, with a sidewise glance, asked, “What did you say your name was?” Then, still apparently somewhat shattered, he directed me to a salesman.

I launched into my buying terribly, terribly happy, yet filled with all sorts of misgivings. Was I selecting the right books? And who would I sell them to? But I had only to touch their brand new shiny jackets to restore my confidence. I remember buying Jules Romain’s Men of Good Will. In fifteen years, I never sold a copy. I’m still trying. I bought Knut Hamson, Thomas Mann, Sigrid Undset, Joseph Hergesheimer, Willa Cather, Henry James—as much good reading as I could obtain for $298.49. I was promised delivery as soon as the check cleared.

When the books arrived on a Saturday morning, it was like a first love affair. I waited breathlessly as the truck drew up, full of books for my shop. It wasn’t full at all, of course—not for me, anyway. My books were contained in a few modest boxes. And I had built shelves all the way up to the ceiling!

Again, a moment of panic. Enough, my heart said. Stay in the dream! What’s next?

The next step was to get recordings. In this field, at least, I found that all the major companies had branch offices in Chicago. I called Columbia records and was told they’d send me a salesman.

He arrived a few days later, blue eyed and blond haired, an interesting man with a sad message. “No, we can’t open you up,” he said. “It’s out of the question. Your store is in direct conflict with Lyon and Healy on the Avenue. So there’s no question about it, we can’t give you a franchise. We won’t. Decca won’t. And I’m sure RCA won’t.”

I was overcome with rage. Didn’t he know I had fought to keep this country free? Wasn’t there such a thing as free enterprise? Didn’t I have a right to compete in a decent and honorable manner? If I couldn’t get records one way, I’d get them another, I assured him. Strangely enough, he seemed to like my reaction. Later he was able to help me.

But for the present, I was reduced to borrowing more money from my brother-in-law with which to buy off-beat recordings from an independent distributor. I brought my own phonograph from home and my typewriter and settled down to the long wait for the first customer.

How do you get going in a business of which you have no practical knowledge and which inherently is a doomed undertaking to begin with? The only answer is that you must be favored with guardian angels.

The first one to bring a flutter of hope into my life came into it on a September afternoon at a luncheon affair, under I do not know what auspices, for Chicago authors. There I encountered a distinguished looking white-haired gentleman, tall but with the sloping back of a literary man, standing mildly in a corner. I introduced myself to Vincent Starrett, bibliophile and Sherlock Holmes scholar. He listened attentively to my account of myself and took my phone number. A few days later he called to ask for more information about my idea of combining the sale of books and records.

I pointed out that it was easy, for example, to sell a copy of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt if the customer was familiar with Grieg’s incidental music for the play. Besides, reading and listening were closely allied activities. Anyone with literary tastes could or should have equivalent tastes in music. It was logical to sell a record at the same time you sold a book. Mr. Starrett thought this was a fine idea, and to my shocked surprise, wrote a paragraph about me in his column in the Book Section of the Chicago Sunday Tribune.

The Monday after the write-up appeared, I could hardly wait to get to the shop. I expected it would be flooded with people. It wasn’t. The phone didn’t even ring. I was disappointed, but still felt that hidden forces were working in the direction of my success. Mr. Starrett’s kind words were a turning point for me—I no longer felt anonymous.

Some people did see the write-up—intelligent, charming, good people, such as I had imagined gathering in my tiny premises. Among them were two young women who were commercial artists. One day they complained that there was nothing in the store to sit on, and after I had stumbled for excuses, they presented me with a bench decorated on either side with the inscriptions: “Words and Music by Stuart Brent,” and “Time Is Well Spent with Stuart Brent.” Now I felt sure things were looking up.

My next good genie and an important influence in my life was a short, bald gentleman with horn-rimmed spectacles who stood uncertainly in the doorway and asked, “Where’s the shop?”

He was Ben Kartman, then Associate Editor of Coronet Magazine, a man as kind and thoughtful as he is witty and urbane. He came in and looked around, studied the empty shelves, and shook his head. He shook his head often that afternoon. He wondered if I was seriously trying to be a bookseller—or was I just a dreamer with a hideout?

Surely I wanted to survive, didn’t I? Surely I wanted to sell books. Well, in that case, he assured me, I was going about it all wrong. For one thing, I had no sign. For another, I had no books in the windows. And most important of all, I had no stock. How can you do business without inventory? You can’t sell apples out of an empty barrel.

I took all his comments without a sound.

Then Ben said, “Sunday come out to the house. I’ve got a lot of review copies as well as old but saleable books. Even if you don’t sell them, put them on the shelves. The store will look more prosperous.”

He gave me several hundred books from his library, which we hauled to the store in his car. The Seven Stairs began to look like a real bookshop.

Ben Kartman also decided that I needed publicity. Not long afterward, my name appeared in a daily gossip column in one of the Chicago newspapers. Ben said that these daily puffers could be important to me, and this proved to be the case.

Meshing with my association with Kartman was another significant influence—a man who certainly altered my life and might have changed it still more had he lived. He was Ric Riccardo, owner of a famous restaurant a quarter of a mile down the street from my shop, and one of the most extraordinary and magnetic personalities I have ever encountered. He was an accomplished artist, but it was his fire, his avid love of life, his utterly unfettered speech and manner, his infatuation both with physical being and ideas that drew the famous and the somewhat famous and the plain hangers-on constantly to his presence. He is the only great romantic character I have known.

He first came into my store one day before Christmas. He wore a Cossack fur hat and a coat with a huge mink collar and held a pair of Great Danes on a leash. He had the physique of Ezio Pinza and the profile (not to mention more than a hint of the bags beneath the eyes) of his friend, the late John Barrymore. He was tremendous. He told me all he wanted was some light reading to get his mind off his troubles.

Later when Riccardo and the Danes entered the shop, virtually filling it, I would stand on a chair to converse with him. He was very tall and it gave me a better chance to observe him. Although his language was often coarse, he shunned small talk or fake expressions. The only time he ever reprimanded me was the day I used the phrase, “I’ve got news for you.” As our friendship became firm, I would often join him after closing the store for a bowl of green noodles (still a great specialty of the restaurant which is now managed by his son).

Now if, as Ben said, I did everything wrong, there was at least one thing I certainly did not neglect to do. I talked to people. I knew my books and I knew what I was talking about. Ideas were and are living things to me and objects of total enthusiasm. It hurt me terribly if someone came in and asked for a book without letting me talk with him about it. The whole joy of selling a book was in talking about the ideas in it. It was a matter of sharing my life and my thought and my very blood stream with others. That was why I had been impelled into this mad venture—unrelated to any practical consideration beyond enthusiasm for the only things that seemed to me to be meaningful. Ric was one of those who responded to this enthusiasm.

One very cold February morning, a cab stopped outside the shop. I saw two men and a woman get out and come up the stairs. There was a good fire going in the fireplace and it was quiet and warm inside.

Ric was the only member of the trio I recognized, although the other man looked at me as though I should know him. But the woman! She wore the longest, most magnificent mink coat I had ever seen, the collar partially turned up about her head. When she spoke, I backed away, but she stepped in and extended her hand to me. It was Katharine Hepburn.

“Oh, yes, that’s Katie,” the unidentified man said, and all of them laughed at my obvious confusion. Miss Hepburn sat on my decorated bench and held out her hands to the fire.

Ric said, “Stuart, my boy, this is Luther Adler.”

I was too nervous to say anything as we shook hands. I could only keep staring at Katharine Hepburn. I adored her. I loved her accent and those cheek bones and that highly charged voice. I wanted so much to do something for her but I couldn’t think of anything to do.

Suddenly Ric said, “Let’s buy some books.”

Mr. Adler looked about and said, “Do you have a book for a Lost Woman?”

I said, “Yes,” and handed him a copy of Ferdinand Lundberg’s new book, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex. He gave it to Miss Hepburn, saying, “Here, Katie, this is for you.”

Without a pause, she turned and said, “Do you have a good book for a Lost Jew?”

“Yes,” I said, and produced a Sholem Asch volume.

She gave it to Mr. Adler, saying, “Here, Luther, this is for you.”

They bought many books that morning, and I was swept away in wonder and exhilaration at the possibility of bringing happiness to Lost Women, Lost Jews, the Beautiful and the Great, alike in their needs with all of us for the strength and joy of the spirit. It was wonderful—but it was awful when I had to take their money.

A world very much like that of my dreams began to open up. People came. Authors began to congregate around the fireplace. The shop was visited by newspaper writers like Martha King, of the Chicago Sun-Times, who wrote a charming article, for which I was deeply grateful. I was beginning to do business, although still without a cash register. The rent was paid promptly, and McClurg’s permitted me to have a charge account. One or two Eastern publishers even let me have some books on open account. And the man from Columbia Records kept dropping by, leading me to believe that they might be thinking about me in spite of their presumed obligations to Lyon and Healy.

Why did people come, often far out of their way and at considerable inconvenience? I was too busy to reflect upon the matter at the time. There was nothing there but the books and me—and a great deal of talk. But some need must have been filled—by moving people to take notice of themselves, forcing them to think about what they were reading or what they were listening to. We talked a lot of small talk, too, but it was small talk with heart in it. And the effect was contagious. Those who came told others and they came too.

The place acquired a life of its own, which will be the subject of many of the following pages. But that life, real and wonderful as it was, could not endure. Perhaps it is worth writing about because it is not a success story—and what came after has its meaning in the reflected tenderness and flickering hope those years taught one to cherish.

This is not merely a sentimental record. It has no point unless seen against the background of the cultural poverty of our society—and the apparent economic impossibility of alleviating that poverty through commercial channels such as the publication and distribution of books.

The plain fact is, the kind of business I wanted to immerse myself in does not exist. One of the reasons it does not exist is because the publishing industry does not—and quite possibly cannot—support it, even to the extent of supplying its reason for being: good books. The business of publishing and the profession of letters have become worlds apart. The arts are being bereft of their purpose through a horrifying operation known as “the communications industry,” an industry geared for junk eaters.

Publishing is “bigger” and more profitable today than ever before, largely because of the mushrooming of educational institutions and the consequent demand for textbooks. Wall Street has gone into publishing; there is money in it. But the money is in mass distribution—through the schools, through the book clubs. It is little wonder that the individual, personal bookseller is an anachronism, lost sight of by the publishers themselves. The bookseller may feel outraged, as I did, when a publisher sells him books, then sends out a mailing piece to the bookseller’s customers offering the same books at a much lower price. The practice is certainly unfair, but the bookseller has become a completely vestigial distributing organ. What the publisher is really looking forward to is the possibility that one of the book clubs will take some of his publications, further slashing the price beyond the possibility of retail competition.

And what of the writer? If he can turn out bestsellers, he can live like a potentate. But the sure-fire formula in this field is to pander to a sex-starved culture and a dirty, vulgar one to boot. A book written by this or any other formula can’t be worth anything. A true book must be part of the individual’s life and spirit.

It is commonplace to blame the public for what the public gets. And no doubt the public must take the blame. But I am not interested in giving the public what it wants if this means corrupting man’s spirit even through as ineffectual a medium as the printed word.

As a matter of fact, I have never had what people wanted to read (“Your competitor just bought fifty copies of this title,” the publisher’s representative would tell me, shaking his head hopelessly), and I lost out because of it. But my personal satisfaction derived from recommending some book, possibly an old one, that I thought would bring the reader something fresh and real.

Anything that touches the heart or stirs the mind has become a matter for apology. I think of Mary Martin coming out on the stage in South Pacific and begging the audience’s indulgence and forgiveness for having to admit to them that she was in love with a wonderful guy!

Is it any wonder that modern men and women are so threatened, frightened, and weak when they have lost the capacity for love, tenderness and awe—capacities which should be nourished by what we read? And especially the men. “Where are the men?” the women ask. Once a man has joined “the organization,” the love of a real woman offers a basic threat. The organization man doesn’t want to be challenged by a relationship any more than by an idea.

It was to these deficiencies in people’s lives that I had hoped to minister. Reading remains a positive leverage to keep us from becoming dehumanized. But easy reading won’t do it, or phony Great Book courses that foster smugness and an assumed superiority (read the ads purveying this kind of intellectual snobbery).

We can’t go on devaluating the human spirit and expect some miracle to save us. Even Moses couldn’t get the Red Sea to divide until a stranger acted upon absolute faith and jumped in. I felt my job was to get people to jump—to read something, old or new, that could engage them in some real vision of human possibilities: to read Albert Camus or Graham Greene or Rollo May or Erich Fromm. To read again (or for the first time) Ibsen’s Peer Gynt or Kafka’s The Trial, Bruno Bettleheim’s The Informed Heart, F. S. C. Northrop’s Philosophical Anthropology, or Father duChardin’s The Phenomena of Man.

I decided I could sell a good book just as easily as a bad book. In the days following the visit of Katharine Hepburn, I placed Modern Woman: The Lost Sex into the hands of many women, and the responses were gratifying and illuminating. Finally I wrote a letter to Ferdinand Lundberg, co-author of the book, telling him of one of the most interesting of these incidents. He sent the letter along to Mary Griffiths, then advertising manager for Harper and Brothers, who asked permission to reprint it in its entirety as an ad in the Chicago Tribune book section. A phenomenal sale resulted. I sold hundreds of copies and so did other Chicago booksellers.

It looked as though things were opening up for me, as though I might be on the way toward proving my point. And perhaps something was proved. Much later when in a state of great depression I wrote a gloomy letter to Hardwick Moseley, sales manager of Houghton Mifflin, he responded by saying, “Never will I permit you to leave the book business. If we had fifty more like you in the United States we might have a business!” But for so many reasons, some of which I have just dwelt on, the odds against fifty such enterprises flowering—or any of them flourishing—are very, very great.

Meantime, however, several colorful years of the Seven Stairs lay ahead, and, beyond that, an unimagined range of encounter in the diverse realms of art and letters, psychiatry, commerce, and, that monster of the age, television.

4
Building the Seven Stairs

You’d be surprised how humiliating it can be to wrap books in cramped quarters.

As business grew, Saturday afternoon became a great but soul-shattering time for me. The shop was filled with people, music, conversation. There was the delicious thrill of selling, tarnished still by the dubious proposition of taking money, and followed finally by the utter physical subjugation of package wrapping. One moment I was riding a wave of spiritual exhilaration; the next moment I was the contorted victim of some degrading seizure as I grappled with paper and twine while people pressed about me. The shop was too small!

Ben Kartman had constantly encouraged me to expand. But expand where? Well, there was a back room occupied by a dancer who had given up his career because of a psychotic fear of travel. It was a fine, big room, and it too had a fireplace. He was very friendly and I had helped him find a bit of solace through Havelock Ellis’ The Dance of Life. The only course now seemed to be to persuade him to move into one of the vacant studios upstairs. This proved not difficult to do so far as he was concerned, but what of our landlord?

So again I was calling my landlord, and with his voice dripping with its usual sweetness he invited me to come right over.

It was all just the same, the little patent leather shoes, the pin striped trousers, the pearl grey vest, the stickpin in the tie, the waxed moustache, the mincing steps across the thick rugs of the rich, imperious, and somewhat decayed quarters. There was the same circuitous conversation with a thousand extraneous asides, but somehow it resulted in my signing a two-year lease for the doubled space. And this time I didn’t even need a co-signer. My landlord felt sure my success was as good as made.

I firmly believed I was on my way, too. I had suffered and nearly broken more than once, but the dream was working. I was building a store with love in it. I wasn’t merely selling books—I was teaching. And in my awesome love for books, every package of fresh, new volumes, cold and virginal to the touch, shining with invitation, returned my devotion with a sensuous thrill. In discovering this world, I felt I had discovered myself. I had been tested, and the future was open before me.

Of course, I had no money. But I was young, my nervous system could take endless punishment, my stomach could digest anything, and I could sleep on a rock. Beholden to no one, I hit upon a principle: If an idea is psychologically sound, it must be economically feasible.

Now I was sure. The breakthrough was more than the penetration of a wall into another room. It would be a breakthrough for my heart and a new beginning in my life.

The first thing to do was to bring in a building contractor. He surveyed the situation and assured me that the job was simple—two men could do it in a week. It would cost about one thousand dollars.

Well what about it? Of course all of my profits were tied up in increased stock, but I was certainly not going to let money check my enthusiasm at this point. The time had come, I decided, to see about a bank. Every day while riding the bus I saw signs offering me money on my signature only. Do you want a new car? Need to pay old bills? Buy a car? Buy a refrigerator? Buy anything? See your friendly banker. What really decent fellows these bankers must be!

I had also been told at the separation center that as a former soldier I was entitled to certain kinds of help from a grateful government, which included financial backing in any promising business venture. I could not see anything standing seriously in the way of my borrowing a thousand dollars for my breakthrough.

Therefore, bright and early on a fine morning, I went to the bank. I had dressed myself with care. My tie was straight and my shirt clean. I wore my only suit. My shoes were shined. I had shaved carefully and brushed my hair with purpose. After all, I reasoned, a banker is a banker—you must respect him. I had never known a banker before in my life, and I scare easily.

When I sat down with the bank officer, I was glad I had taken care to make a good impression, for he looked me over while I stated my business. Apparently his mind was not on my attire, however.

“Do you carry life insurance?” he said.

“No, sir.”

“Do you have a car?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you have stocks or bonds?”

I felt slightly ill. No one in my entire life had ever mentioned stocks or bonds to me.

“Then what will you do for collateral?”

Again a word no one had ever used in front of me.

I tried another tack. “I believe I ought to tell you more about myself.” Then my voice dried up. Tell him what? That when I was in college, I learned the Ode to the West Wind by heart? That I believed in the impossible? That I would rather die than fail to meet an obligation to his bank? It would never do ... not for this man with the pale, hard eyes.

He was not unkind to me. He pointed to a little, old lady across the floor and said, “Now suppose that woman making a deposit were told that I made a loan to you of one thousand dollars without the security of any collateral, do you know what she could do? She could have me fired for jeopardizing her savings.”

I didn’t have the heart to ask about the happy signs in the buses, but grasped at one last straw. “Isn’t it a fact,” I said, “that the government will guarantee this kind of loan if I can show justification for it?”

He admitted this was correct. “But we’d rather not make that kind of loan,” he said.

That was twelve years ago. Today the banks are generous and I can get a loan without shining my shoes or straightening my tie. The answer is terribly simple. Banks only loan money to those who already have it.

I walked defeated along Michigan Avenue under the cloudless sky. It was all so simple, logical, and perfectly mechanical. I just couldn’t make something out of nothing, no matter how strong my will or how deep my faith. I had to have money.

As I walked, a comment of my father’s flitted through my mind: “Some men make it early in life, but you, my son, will make it a little late in life. But you’ll make it.” I said to myself, “Look, nothing has changed. Nothing at all. If you don’t expand, what of it? Are you beginning to think of the kind of success that feeds the infantile longings of so many adults? What’s wrong with what you’ve accomplished?”

I remembered going to my father to talk about college. “Go to college,” he told me. “It is very important to get a college education. I’m right behind you.”

“It takes money to go to college,” I said.

“Money?” he said. “What fool can’t go to college with money? The idea is to make it without money!”

And so I did.

I was feeling better when I reached the shop, but was still so deep in my soliloquy that I rested my head on the desk and did not even hear Ben Kartman’s steps when he came up the stairs.

“What’s the trouble, Stuart?” he said, standing in the doorway looking at me.

“I went to the bank,” I told him. “They turned me down. I’m a poor credit risk and they never heard of World War II, believe me. So there’ll be no expansion.”

“How much will the construction cost?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“But you’ll need some more money for stock and to fix the place up, won’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Well?” He began to laugh while I talked my problem out. Finally he stopped laughing and I stopped talking.

“Get your hat and come with me,” he said. “I’ll get you the money.”

We went to the bank together. Ben signed the notes with his house as collateral. I got the money and the breakthrough began. But I owed the bank two thousand dollars! I no longer slept so well.

Anyway, down went the partition and the Seven Stairs expanded. Joe Reiner, then sales representative for Crown Publishers, happened in and, observing that I needed more book shelving, took me to see Dorothy Gottlieb, who was moving her Gold Coast bookstore[bookstore] to the Ambassador East Hotel. She had plenty of shelving to sell.

On a Sunday morning, Joe and I got a mover to bring in the new fixtures. We came puffing and grunting in with the shelving and nearly annihilated my sick ballet dancer, who was supposed to have moved out a week before. He lay on a mattress in the middle of the floor and, upon seeing us, let out a yell and drew the blankets up to his chin, crying, “What do you think this is? A Frank Capra movie? Here I lie on my virtuous couch, too ill to move, and you...!”

I developed several successful techniques for selling books. For example, when I read a book that I liked very much, I would send out a post card to everyone I believed might be interested in it also. There is not much room on a post card, so the words describing the value of the book had to be selected carefully. I avoided the dust jacket phrases. “Great,” “brilliant,” and “exciting” won’t cut any mustard. You must know your book and know your mailing list.

Another technique was the use of the phone call—a very delicate tool that must not be employed indiscriminately. The call must, first of all, be made to someone who you are reasonably sure won’t resent it. And you must know exactly what to say and say it quickly.

When a friend came into the store, I might greet him with “Ah, guter brudder, glad you stopped in. I have a book for you.” Or, “Here is a new Mozart recording you must hear.”

To have a successful book store means also to be a slave to detail. This I found killing. Often I would struggle for hours to track down a title someone had requested, go to the trouble of ordering it (more often than not on a money in advance basis), only to find that the customer no longer wanted the book. Or I would special order a book, run like a demented fool over to the customer’s office to deliver it personally, and discover that the wrong book had been ordered in the first place. You could pretend to yourself that this kind of service would endear you to the customer and cement a faithful relationship, but it didn’t always work that way.

I worked hard, but my customer relations were not always perfect. I demanded that customers buy books for the same reasons that I sold them—out of a serious regard for greatness. I could not stand having myself or my books and records treated as a toy by the jaded and self-satisfied. And I was a jealous god. Today I know better, yet I instinctively back away from a customer who comes into the store carrying a package from another bookseller.

But well or poorly done, it took all kinds of doing: typing post cards, making phone calls, washing and sweeping the floor, cleaning the windows and shelves, running to the post office, delivering books, and talking in the meanwhile on the mind of Spinoza, the beauty of the Mozart D Minor Quartet, the narrative power of Hemingway, or the value of The Caine Mutiny, which on first appearance was slow to catch on.

Still, the business was developing. Each day I met someone new. Each day presented new challenges to one’s strength and intuition and pure capacity for survival. Around this struggle there developed a convivial circle which was ample reward for anything. On any Saturday afternoon it might include Nelson Algren, Jack Conroy, Studs Terkel, Ira Blitzsten, Dr. Harvey Lewis, Marvin Spira, Evelyn Mayer, David Brooks and Dr. Robert Kohrman, holding forth on an inexhaustible range of subjects, filling the air with tobacco smoke, drinking fiercely strong coffee from sometimes dirty cups, and munching salami and apples. The world of the Seven Stairs was beginning to form.

For months I practically made a career of selling Nelson Algren’s neglected volume of short stories, The Neon Wilderness. Nelson had already received considerable acclaim for the book, as well as his already published novels, Somebody in Boots and Never Come Morning, but short stories don’t sell (it is said). In any event, these stories represent some of Algren’s finest work (which at its best is very fine indeed), and I placed the book in the hands of everyone who came into the shop. I sold hundreds of copies. Then to keep the book alive, we held periodic parties. One month we would call it Nelson’s birthday, another month the birthday of the publication of the book, still another the birthday of the book itself. We invariably invited many of the same people, along with new prospects. At one point, Ira Blitzsten was moved to remark that he didn’t want Nelson to autograph his copy as he wanted the distinction of being the only person in Chicago with an unsigned copy.

Algren is a tall, lanky individual with mussed blond hair and a sensitive face, sometimes tight and drawn, sometimes[sometimes] relaxed. In those days he wore steel rimmed spectacles and Clark Street clothes—a pin stripe suit, a garish shirt, a ridiculous tie, in spite of which he still had a fairly conservative bearing. Once he even wore a bow tie that lit up.

He is a quiet man. You sense he has a temper, but he seldom uses it. He is an authority on the argot of the “wild side of the street,” and I never heard him utter a vulgar word. He has the faculty of putting others at ease. When he talks with you, he gives you a remarkable singleness of attention. Even if the room is overflowing with people, you know that he is listening only to you.

He is a loner who reveals nothing of his private life. In fact, he never gave me his address. When he is introduced to someone, he shakes hands and nods his head at the same time. He gives you the simultaneous impression of understanding and remoteness. You are not surprised to find that his humor is sardonic.

Nelson Algren and Jack Conroy could perform a remarkable duet on the subject of James T. Farrell, Conroy in a broad Irish accent, Algren in a clipped, half muttering manner. I never learned the personal source of their animosity, but the name of Farrell had the magic to channel all their hostilities and frustrations into a fountain of pure malice. It was wonderful.

Sometimes Nelson brought his mother. Sometimes he would bring with him one of the girls related to the novel he was then writing, The Man with the Golden Arm. One night Nelson took me to “the wild side.” We entered a Clark Street tavern, a long, bare hall perhaps 150 feet long and thirty feet wide. Along one wall stretched a huge bar. It was a busy evening—every stool was occupied. We crossed the wooden floor to the other side of the room where there were rows of small tables with folding chairs set around them. Before we were seated, one of the men at the bar slugged his woman in the mouth, and the two fell off their stools, blood gushing, and landed, one on top of the other on the floor. The bartenders came around and dragged them out, pitching them into the street.

A moment later one of the bartenders was at our table asking for our order. He knew Nelson, and they chatted easily. I was, frankly, sniffing, for as the stale beer smell of the place settled, I had a sense of being literally in a zoo.

As I looked about, I observed a mesh of wire fencing across the section of the ceiling beneath which we were sitting. I got up and inspected. There above us were live monkeys sitting on a bar behind the fence. I sat down and asked Nelson what this meant.

He said, “Wait and see.”

The tavern din was terrible, a demonic blend of shouting, laughing, swearing, name-calling—the human cries at inhuman pitch. It was out of a Gorky novel.

We drank several beers and waited, talking very little. Nelson’s face seemed fixed in a slight smile of playful disdain. It was impossible to say of what.

My bafflement was intensified when two men walked in and approached the place where we were sitting. They pulled a ladder from the wall, climbed the steps, and opened the door of one of the cages. One of the men took a monkey by the leather strap attached to its collar, placed it on his back, and climbed down the ladder. He walked to the far end of the room, opened a door, went in, and closed the door after him and his companion.

I sat rooted to my seat, failing to understand what I had seen. Was this in some way the meaning behind the phrase, “a monkey on his back”? I knew that whatever was going on here could scarcely be an idle zoological experiment, yet somehow I felt an impenetrable wall between my innocence and the full possibilities of human depravity.

I looked once more at the people in the tavern, and all at once it was with different eyes. I no longer saw them as “dregs” and “strays.” I saw something terrible, humiliating, too outrageous to form into words.

What is happening? Who are these people? Are they, indeed, people? But am I? Have I an identity?

My smugness melted and the distaste I had felt for what I saw now angered me. I had come into this place small, mean, and superior, a cad and a fop, the epitome of what I had long viewed with scorn in others.

I had a better notion of what Nelson was seeing and the nature of his protest. He had shown me a world where people lived without choice or destination.

I lived for days with this nightmare, asking myself why I should feel guilt for those who no longer feel responsible for themselves. Then it occurred to me that the question was never one of guilt, but only of love. The agony exists regardless of the setting. The lack of love is not alone on Clark Street.

To be successful, an autographing cocktail party must be planned with consummate skill and attention to detail. You must leave nothing to chance. You may not pretend that everything will work out satisfactorily at the last minute. It will not. And because I respected writers so much, I tried to guard them against the ultimate humiliation of sitting at a table before a pile of their own books, with no buyers.

I adopted the following procedure: First, get from the author his own list of names—people he would like personally to invite to his party. Phone each of them, or at least write a post card asking if they are interested in receiving a signed copy of the book. Next, send out the invitation to all your charge accounts, then check the mailing list for people you think will be interested in the book. Avoid freeloaders. Invite the press and the literary critics and try to write a short human interest story for the columnists. In short, build up as big an advance as possible.

Furthermore, don’t throw a skimpy party. People carry away impressions, and the only impression[impression] you can afford is a bountiful one. It is said that all the world loves a lover, but one thing you can be sure of is that they love a winner. So avoid failure by planning against it, and then pray. Pray that it won’t rain or turn freezing cold, that the pipes won’t break or the electricity be turned off. Pray that you may fulfill your multiple responsibilities; to the author, the publisher, and your own hopes for continuing operation.

It seemed natural that one of our greatest cocktail parties should be given for Nelson Algren upon publication of The Man with the Golden Arm. Yet behind the scenes things went very oddly, and for a time it was hard to tell whether either the author or the publisher wanted the party—or the large downtown department store, either, which entered the picture as a prospect for the event.

Anyway, it took place at the Seven Stairs. Ken McCormick, Editor-in-Chief of Doubleday, Nelson’s publisher, flew into Chicago. I can see him still, loaded with books in both arms, carrying them from one room to another.

There was high excitement—newspaper photographers and an unbelievable crush of people. It all began to tell on Nelson’s nerves and mine. It seemed to me he was writing too long in each book, and at times he would change his mind in the middle of an inscription and ask for another copy (to Nelson such revision was a literary exercise, to me a spoiled copy was a financial loss). The line of guests seemed endless and I began to develop an active dislike for people, for money, for the whole business. Besides, it was getting awfully hot. Nelson and Ken and I removed our coats. Nelson even gave up writing long paragraphs in each book. I tried keeping a cool drink at his side at all times. It seemed to help.

It was a great but strange party. Nelson was a success, and in a way I was, too. And this altered things enormously. It had never occurred to me how people attach themselves to the rescue phantasy, how easily failure inspires love, how differently even the semblance of success affects relationships. All at once, people who had only wanted to help me became hypersensitive and found me snubbing them. And I was feeling a new sensitivity also: “You can’t destroy me in the process of buying from me.” It was the beginning of a new struggle.

The last guest finally left. Ken McCormick was a very happy publisher. I swept all interior confusions aside and counted up the books. We had sold one thousand copies of The Man with the Golden Arm in a single night! It was almost too much for Ken—he had to see it to believe it. And we were all dead tired. Just as I was about to turn the last light switch before we went out the door, I remembered and asked Nelson to autograph a book for me. As he bent down to write, I could see Bob Kohrman and myself sitting on the sand dunes reading the galleys of the book. I remembered conversations with Nelson and Jack Conroy in regard to the title, and Jack’s needling of Nelson when the advances were running out, saying, “Any day now you’ll be begging to come to work on the encyclopedia” (the constant drudgery to which Jack has given most of his working hours for two decades.)

Nelson, crouching over the book, wrote: “For Stuart and Jennie. The best in the West (as well as the South, North and East). Because he’s the boy with the golden wife—and she’s the girl with the golden guy.”

For there was indeed now a Jennie, a golden girl with whose short life mine was now linked in a more responsible relationship than I had ever imagined I would assume—a decisive part in the unimaginable future building before me.

We were all on our way now, but Jack Conroy was the last to leave. He had waited until the very end to say, “Papa, it was a fine party. I’m proud of you and your efforts for Nelson.” They were all gone now, the columnists, the celebrities, the crowd that stretched in a file of twos almost to the corner drug store. Only Jack Conroy, a huge and gentle man with his “Hello, Papa,” the extended hand, and the tiny stare in the blue, grey-flecked eyes, always waiting, wondering how you are going to accept his greeting.

This is the wild, humorous, tender man who gave Tennessee Williams his first important break, who first published Richard Wright, who wrote a bestseller[bestseller] thirty years ago that is highly regarded by the few who remember it, and who is rated as the second most popular American author in all of Russia, one below Melville and one above Poe.[^[1]] His only material reward: a purported fortune in rubles which he has no intention of ever collecting.

When Jack edited Midland Humor, a discerning anthology published in 1947, he was late to his own party at the Seven Stairs. When he arrived, I was shaken, as I always am, by his look of, “Will I be scolded? Will I be forgiven?”

He can be the most jocular of men, and the most understanding. One afternoon over coffee at the Seven Stairs he reported at hilarious lengths on the drinking prowess of his friend, Burl Ives, who was then doubling between a cabaret engagement at the Blackstone Hotel and the vaudeville show at the Chicago Theater. I was in the depth of my psychiatric period and suggested that help might be in order.

“He doesn’t seem unhappy about it,” said Jack, innocently.

Today Conroy, one of the most talented men in American letters, quietly stands and looks. When he talks, he stares directly at you, or turns his head entirely away and speaks to empty space.

I think he is the most honest man I have ever met: in his intent, in his appraisal of others and their writing, and in his own bereavement. As the gait grows slower, the shyness becomes more pronounced and the gaze extends away farther and farther.

He has been called the Samuel Johnson of the Chicago South Side. The designation fits in many ways—the large physical build, the forceful expression and comprehensive knowledge, the long toil in the compilation of reference works—and in some ways not at all. He has been many things, at times even a wandering player, and his physiognomy suggests a somewhat more cerebral William Bendix.

He can provide the most wonderful encouragement to others. But his own burden is lack of time—lack of time for all his obligations, for all he should do. Publisher after publisher offers him handsome advances, and he declines them. He knows he would not fulfill the obligation.

We were at lunch not long ago. “I’m going down to Mexico on my vacation,” he said. “I’m going to visit Motley.”

I had known the tragic eyes of Willard Motley, whose Knock on Any Door did not fill our friend, Algren, with any particular enthusiasm.

“You know, that Nelson is mean,” Jack said. “He wrote some nasty things about me in the Reporter. Did you see that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, he did. We used to see a lot of each other.”

We walked back to the office building where Jack does his faithful, painstaking hack work.

“I’ll drop you a line from Mexico,” he said. “I’ll tell Motley that you’re writing a book. Take care of yourself. I’ll see you when I get back.”

The grey-blue eyes were suddenly swollen with sadness, and the voice stretched in a heavier drawl. I wished with all my heart that things would work out well for Jack Conroy.

The relationship between genius and disaster is too deep for me to comprehend. I do know that genius is never made; it is only discovered. There has to be a front runner. The notion that genius will out, regardless of circumstances, is simply to ignore the nature of genius, which must center upon itself in order to function. I sometimes think that the energy expended in creating a really imaginative work drains the humanity out of the artist. If his personal life suffers as a consequence, his business acumen is even more incidental.

The Man with the Golden Arm was Algren’s great commercial success, and the harvest was reaped by others. The story is told, or at any rate that part which has any bearing on this discourse, in a classic letter from Nelson to Otto Preminger, producer of the movie which bore the title, if not the imprint, of the novel:

Hotel Vermillion

6162 West Hollywood Blvd.

Los Angeles, California

February 16, 1955

Mr. Otto Preminger

Columbia Studios

1438 Gower Street

Los Angeles, California

Dear Mr. Preminger:

I am advised by your office that arrangements are now under way to award me the sum of two hundred and three dollars and seventy-eight cents, spent by myself to proceed, upon your invitation, to the city of Los Angeles. I find this gesture most generous, but am compelled to inform you that this money was spent to no purpose to which you are member. Thank you all the same.

I am further instructed that arrangements are also under way to compensate me, at the rate of thirty-five dollars per diem, for listening to the expression of certain thoughts, after a manner of speaking, by yourself. These occurred between January 27th and 31st inclusively. But since these were all, like the novel about which you wove them, the property of other persons living or dead, I cannot in conscience honor them by acceptance of such compensation. Again I am grateful. And again I am instructed that a check for the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars, in addition to the above items, is due me from yourself. I assume this may well be an effort to repay me for some twelve pages of double-spaced typing I achieved in an effort to discover what in God’s name you were talking about. Since these pages served only to confuse you further, no moneys are rightfully due me. Yet your thoughtfulness does not cease to move me.

Should this concern for me derive from a simple and heartfelt gratitude for a diversion afforded you for a full week by “an interesting person,” as you so happily put it when the moment came for parting, I do not feel you are so much indebted. Although I did not find in you an interesting person, I did discover one of arrogance approaching the uncanny. Upon the basis of mutual amusement, therefore, I am the debtor. And since you are decidedly more uncanny than I am interesting, I must at a rough estimate, owe you close to forty dollars.

And forward this sum confident of your satisfaction in alms from any quarter, however small, and remain

your obedient servant

Nelson Algren

“He jests at scars who never felt a wound.”

5
The Day My Accountant Cried

I dislike being interrupted when I am interesting someone in a book. One late afternoon while I was engaged in making a sale, my accountant tiptoed over and stood close to me. I moved away, but he came close again. I frowned; generally that was enough to frighten him. But not this time.

“I must speak with you,” he said. “It’s very important.”