LISTENING TO DIFFERENT DRUMMERS - upm.ro 05 05.pdf · Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, r

Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue

Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9

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Section: Literature

LISTENING TO DIFFERENT DRUMMERS

Dragoș Avădanei Assoc. Prof., PhD, ”Al. Ioan Cuza” University of Iași

Abstract: By those hearing or listening to a different drummer Thoreau certainly meant American

individualistsŕi.e. individuals who found themselves in a world where they could sau Ŗnoŗ

whenever they felt like it: no to old traditions, customs, beliefs…, no to the establishment as such and, mainly, no to authority of any kind (see also his ŖCivil Disobedienceŗ). The nay-saying

pattern in literature (except for Thoreau, Emerson and Alcott) may have begun with Hawthorne

and Melville, while Melville himself also provides, in his ŖBartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,ŗ the pattern for our paperřs premise: a community that the nay-sayer refuses integration

with, a representative of this group of Ŗcompanionsŗ who becomes a helper (often being the

narrator as well), the nay-sayer himself/herself and the conflict, followed by the protagonistřs

death/suicide/nothingness. The other three stories are Jamesř ŖBrooksmith,ŗ Faulknerřs ŖThat Evening Sunŗ and Bellowřs ŖLooking for Mr. Greenŗ; the pattern may show inevitable

variations, but the general narrative thrust is comparable.

Keywords: nay-saying, individualism, Melville, James, Faulkner, Bellow

ŖIf a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is

because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the

music which he hears, however measured or far away.ŗ

H. D. Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 18

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) provides more than the title and this epigraph for

our paper; the Transcendentalistřs creative protest seems to have begun in 1848, with a

lecture he gaveŕon January 26ŕat the Concord Lyceum about the rights of individuals

to self-government (after his jail experience for not having paid his taxes and after reading

P. B. Shelleyřs 1819 The Mask of Anarchy); this lecture then became ŖResistance to Civil

Government,ŗ published in May 1849 in Elizabeth Peabodyřs Aesthetic Papers, and was

next reworked into his famous ŖCivil Disobedienceŗ(1849).

ŖNay-saying in Concordŗ (see Stoehr, infra) also included Emerson himself and

Alcott, as well as Melville and Hawthorne and here is a fragment from a letter the author

of Moby Dick (1851, n.b.) wrote to the author of The Scarlet Letter on April 16, 1851:

ŖThere is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says No! in thunder, but the

devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say

no,--why, they are in the happy condition of judicious unencumbered travelers in Europe;

they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bagŕthat is to say the Ego.

Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! They will

never get through the Custom House…ŗ; Leslie Fiedlerřs 1960 book was titled No! in

Thunder: Essays on Myth and Literature.



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As far as we are concerned here, Ŗthe unencumbered travelers…ŗ who cross

frontiers into Eternity are Herman Melville himself (1819-1891), Henry James (1843-

1916), William Faulkner (1897-1062) and Saul Bellow (1915-2005), the great authors of

such stories as ŖBartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Streetŗ (1853), ŖBrooksmithŗ

(1891), ŖThat Evening Sunŗ (1931), and ŖLooking for Mr. Greenŗ (1951)ŕcovering one

century of American story-telling that may be said to represent that attitude of refusal.

As a matter of fact, there seems to be a general and characteristic feature of

Americanism in general, which is not necessarily attributable to the Transcendentalists;

one could claim, for instance, that from the early seventeenth-century, when the first

settlers arrived on the American shores, all (or most of them) seized the opportunity of

saying ŖNo!ŗŕno to European (or other) customs, traditions, beliefs, and/or institutions,

no to arbitrary authority (Thoreauřs problem), no to what the majority may think or

decide, and no even to existence as such (Bellowřs story foremost).

These four stories are grouped together here firstŕand paradoxicallyŕbecause

apparently they areŕvery much like their authorsŕas different from one another as any

stories or authors could be; second, because they are considered together by Dean Flower

in his Counterpartsŕbut for his own reasons (the servant/master relationships, the

counterparts formed by morally corrupt v. principled characters…); third, from our

conviction that each literary text releases enriched meanings if read against other such

texts, however dissimilar (at first sight); and, finally, because of a pattern (or template, in

a more contemporary jargon?) discernible in all of them.

This Ŗstructural patternŗ may be summarized as follows: a

community/society/institutionŕThoreauřs Ŗcompanionsŗŕis organized and functions

according to its well/not-so-well established (traditional) rules; up/in comes an individual

who defies or rejects these rules (Ŗnay-sayingŗ); the community is usually ready to

provide help and encouragement toward integration, on condition its rules and regulations

(at times bureaucratic) are accepted and observed; the individual refuses, and ultimately

prefers extinction to integration, and death is always a better choice than compliance; the

majorityŕin and by itselfŕis thus not enough of an argument for decisions regarding the

frame of mind of these individuals; the herořs/heroineřs sacrifice gets to be recorded as a

triumph (from Melville to Bellow, through James and Faulkner); the pattern may present

(in)significant variations.

In other words, none of the four characters in our selected stories (a scrivener, a

butler, an African-American washerwoman, and an invisible welfare man) couldŕor

intended toŕkeep pace with his or her companions; they are either stubborn or anti-

social, strange or even queer, ghost-like or other-worldly, too good or too bad,

unaccountable or simply invisibleŕin a word, misfitsŕor outsiders; the business world

in one story, the society/institution of the salon in a second, the complex and complicated

Southern black-and-white society in a third, and the slum world of Chicago in the fourth

can provide their representative negotiators/helpers, (mostly the narrators themselves), but

the protagonists would stick to their ŖNo!.ŗ One possible interpretation is that all four are

destroyed by their own standards (of refusal) and one cannot help remembering that

Faulkner himself, when once asked about how he sees the difficulties readers encounter in

reading his books, may have answered something like ŖMine is the standard that has to be

met!ŕhowever strange, unusual, unbelievable…

To emphasize the role of this pattern and of the no-saying protagonists, one

could even think of such hypothetical titles as: ŖBartleby, the Scrivener,ŗ ŖBrooksmith,

the Butler,ŗ ŖNancy, the Washerwoman,ŗ and ŖGreen, the Invisible Manŗ; or, maybe

more appropriately, ŖLooking for Mr. Bartleby,ŗ ŖLooking for Mr. Brooksmith,ŗ



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ŖLooking for Ms. Nancy,ŗ and ŖLooking for Mr. Green,ŗ and thus highlighting the quest

pattern. Moreover, we could describe these Ŗghostsŗ as inventions who Ŗwould prefer not

to do anythingŗ in the first, who Ŗwould prefer to live and die in his own (arrogant)

universeŗ in the second, who Ŗwould prefer to be left alone with her own Negro

superstitionŗ in the third, and who Ŗwould prefer to be practically absent from this/that

world.ŗ Lastly, all these alter-egos or doubles of the four narrators/helpers or even

authors, may be seen as contemplators (modern ones) of their own decay and dissolution:

at the Tombs prison and death, as a degraded footman or waiterŕand death, as beaten,

pregnant, and threatened to death, as completely hidden in the land of nowhere.

Hoping that all//most of the components of this pattern (protagonists included)

will seem obviousŕand with few invented or forceful/fanciful similarities tugged in--, we

will intend to follow the two entities in the Walden quotation and look at each individual,

and his/her companions (including the narratorsŕor the points of view), and the conflicts

or tensions between them, in an attempt to prove our rather challenging premise; so four

tentative descriptions of fictional universes that primordially share the unmistakable

common feature of being American and thus belonging to a culture of undeniable

individualism.

Melvilleřs community/companions for his strikingly unusual protagonist to reject

is that of the mid-nineteenth-century business world of advancing capitalism. The

unnamed narrator is a Manhattan lawyer, whose Ŗchambers were upstairs…ŗ on Wall

Street. The ŖWallŗ here is more than an accident: Ŗat one end they /the chambers/ looked

upon… a white wall,ŗ and at the other end there was Ŗa lofty brick wall, black by age and

everlasting shade,ŗ to which are added the surrounding buildings of great height. His

business is that of Ŗconveyance and title hunter, and drawing up recondite documents of

all sortsŗŕdocuments that needed copying, so he needed scriveners; the two he already

had were nicknamed Turkey and Nippers, and they are strange enough themselves.

Elderly Turkey was short and pursy, with oily clothesŕbuggy pantaloons and execrable

coats, and with a Ŗflorid blue face in the morningsŗ and Ŗblazing like coalsŗ in the

afternoon,ŗ when he became noisy, obstreperous, reckless and insolent; young Nippers

was Ŗa piratical-looking,ŗ whiskered and sallow man, the victim of diseased ambition and

indigestion, who dressed in Ŗa gentlemanly sort of way,ŗ but whose disposition was

irritable and of a nervous testiness in the mornings, and calm, controlled, temperate in the

afternoons; so, Ŗwhen Nippers was on, Turkey was off…,ŗ notes the narrator, who finds

Ŗthis… a good natural arrangement.ŗ And, thirdly, the Ŗcompanionsŗ included an office

boy of about twelve, Ginger Nut, an Ŗerrand boy and student at law,ŗ also cleaner and

sweeper, and cake and apple purveyor for Turkey and Nippers; needless to say, the

storyřs community was also made up of professional friends, acquaintances, clients…

As business was prospering, the narrator felt he needed additional help, so he

advertises for a third scrivener, and thus Ŗenter Bartlebyŗ: ŖIn answer to my

advertisement, a motionless young man one morning stood upon my office threshold, the

door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure nowŕpallidly neat, pitiably

respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby!ŗŕof a Ŗsingularly sedate aspect,ŗ too. At

first he did a large volume of high-quality work, Ŗcopying by sunlight and candlelightŗ;

but on the third day comes the beginning of the end as, needing to do some proofreading,

the lawyer-narrator asks Bartleby to cooperate: Ŗ…without moving from his privacy,

Bartleby, in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied ŘI would prefer not to.řŗ The request is

repeated, and so is the answer: ŖI would prefer not to.ŗ

And here we need to complete the portrait of the narrator, who presents himself

as Ŗa rather elderly man…, not far from sixty,ŗ and who gradually turns out to be a



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decent, kind, generous, tolerant, charitable Ŗman of peace,ŗ a rational businessman of a

non-confrontational nature; he also says of himself: ŖI am a man who, from his youth

upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the

best…/so we are invited to wait and see/…I am … an unambitious lawyer…/and/all who

know me consider me an eminently safe man…/which may have irritated Bartleby most/.ŗ

The former Ŗmaster of chanceryŗ insists: ŖI seldom lose my temper; much more seldom

indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages…ŗŕonly Bartlebyřs calm

answer is too much, so his stunned faculties go beyond surprise, into consternation.

Bartlebyřs quiet ŖNo!ŗ is disturbingly shocking: ŖHad there boon the least

uneasiness, anger, impatience, or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there

been anything ordinarily human (n.b.) about him, doubtless I should have violently

dismissed him from my premises…/but/…his face was leanly composed, his grey eye

dimly calm. Not a winkle of agitation rippled him.ŗ Then, Ŗa few days after,ŗ as the

lawyer needs to examine four lengthy documents and so he wanted four proofreaders, he

asks for Bartlebyřs cooperation again: the scrivener Ŗappeared standing at the entrance of

his hermitage…/the narratorřs flights of imagination/. ŘWhat is wanted?ř said he

mildly…řI would prefer not to,ř he said and gently disappeared behind the screen.ŗ

Next the lawyer discovered that his Ŗdoubleŗ started living in his office, so the

employer becomes even more distressed by the latterřs Ŗself-possessed… cadaverously

gentlemanly nonchalance.ŗ

Unable to evict him, the narrator move his business out, though he could not

help feeling the Ŗfraternal melancholyŗ that tied him to Bartleby, whose favorite word,

Ŗprefer,ŗ had become contagious in the small community (taken over by Turkey, first);

amazed at his own Ŗsick and silly brainŗ (he himself had used the word several times), he

had also experienced a strange brotherhood: Ŗboth I and Bartleby were sons of Adam…ŗ

and the confession: ŖI never feel so private as when I know you /Bartleby/ are here…ŗ;

still, ŖNothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance…ŗ(Thoreauřs

ŖCivil Disobedienceŗ was also one of the sources of Gandhiřs philosophy); and from then

on, Ŗlike a very ghost…, Bartleby was never, on any account to be dispatched on the

most trivial errand of any sort…ŗ The narrator was thus going to remember, probably to

the end of his days, the Ŗquiet mysteriesŗ and the Ŗgreat stillness,ŗ the Ŗunalterableness of

demeanorŗ and the Ŗunconscious air of pallid… haughtiness,ŗ the morbid moodiness and

the inscrutable and absurd universe inhabited by Bartleby.

Having decided to (re-)read ŖEdwards on the Willŗ (i.e. ŖInquiry into the

Freedom of the Willŗŕ1754, by protestant preacher, philosopher and theologian Jonathan

Edwards, 1703-1758) and ŖPriestley on Necessityŗ (i.e. The Doctrine of Philosophical

Necessity Illustratedŕ1777, by theologian, materialist philosopher, chemist, educator,

political theorist and educator Joseph Priestley, 1733-1804), and believing that ŖBartleby

was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence…,ŗ the

narrator visits his Ŗghost,ŗ imprisoned at the Tombs, where, Ŗnaturally,ŗ he preferred not

to accept help or assistance, not to tell where he was born or where he was coming from,

not to eat anything, not to live any longer…; so this great nay-sayer dies of starvation, and

the narrator finds he had worked previously in a dead letter office, but, as we shall see, his

choice drummer went on beating (for another century, at least).

As Ŗno satisfactory biography…/of Bartleby/… could be written,ŗ which the

narrator finds as Ŗan irreparable loss to literature,ŗ Melvilleřs Ŗstory of Wall Streetŗ gets

to be published in Putnamřs Magazine in 1853, and was to be regarded both as a

reflection of the authorřs frustration with his own situation as a writer, and



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Ŗunquestionably the masterpiece of the short story fictionŗ (Robert Milder, see

Columbia…) in the Melville canon.

The smaller community circle in Henry Jamesř ŖBrooksmithŗ is Ŗthe institution

of the salonŗ in Mansfield Street, London, maintained by the narratorřs friend Oliver

Offord, a retired bachelor diplomat; as the Ŗweŗ of this again anonymous narrator puts it,

this Ŗinstitutionŗ looks very much like Virgilřs lost world of idyllic bliss, ArcadiaŕŖwe

have been…/the narrator and Brooksmith/…in Arcadia together, and we have both come

to this!ŕŖthisŗ here describing their decayed situation in the second part of the story.

The Ŗsalonŗ and the narratorřs Ŗweŗ stand for Londonřs genteel society toward

the end of the nineteenth-century, which was also very much part of the establishmentŕa

place of urbane, civilized, literate conversation, where Offord, for instance, read passages

from Montaigne and Saint Simon; but also of snobbery. And it is this last aspect that

places the butler in a superior position soon after having learned its standards (and which

will finally destroy him).

Brooksmith was a Ŗsparse brisk little personŗ of about thirty-five at the

beginning of the story, Ŗwith a cloistered white face and extraordinarily polished hair…,

small, clear anxious eyesŗ and a Ŗtuft on his chinŗ; the diplomat used to address him with

Ŗmy dear fellowŗ or Ŗmy poor childŗ (and this, we find in the end, Ŗspoiled himŗ);

Brooksmith spoke French, Ŗhad plenty of school…ŗ and he carried it without arrogance;

his Ŗreceptive silence,ŗ tact and Ŗgrand mannerŗ made him largely responsible for the

convivial atmosphere and the flow of conversation in the salon; the Ŗsensitive

ministrationŗ of this Ŗsurpassingly perfect servantŗ were thus also responsible for the

success and perfection of Offordřs salon; Brooksmith Ŗthe artistŗ was very much Ŗat the

bottom of the mystery.ŗ

Only Brooksmithřs employment and important role disappear with the death of

Offord (Ŗlile the dying Voltaireŗ)ŕŖthe first sign of the quickening drama of poor

Brooksmithřs fate…ŗ; the decline of the institution, a society that Ŗhad become a

necessity of Brooksmithřs natureŗ means also the loss of Brooksmithřs calling or

vocation, and marks the moment of his nay-saying; weak, ill, and embarrassed, the butler

is the victim of the imperfect culture of his superiors; gaining first a situation with a city

financierřs family (Ŗtoo dullŗ for him), refusing any help from the narrator (of spare

means himselfŕŖI lived in two rooms in Jermyn Streetŗŕand gradually proving to be a

rather patronizing and condescending dilettante) or from anybody else (relatives

included), turning down other odd jobs as a peripatetic footman or waiter at society

dinners, this second listener to Ŗanother drummerŗ is last seen in a mean, grimy room in a

short sordid street in Marylebone; then, says the narrator, ŖI never came across him

again,ŗ and Ŗno trace of him had come to lightŗ; presumed dead, by suicide, the butler

may have preferred to be Ŗchanging plates of the immortal gods.ŗ Like that of Bartlebyřs,

Brooksmithřs haunting spirit still follows the narrator at the end of the story: Ŗ…the dim

ghost of poor Brooksmith is one of those that I see…ŗ

A story that first appeared in Harperřs Weekly and, simultaneously, in Black and

White (a strange anticipation of Faulknerřs universe?) in May 1891, part of a larger

interest James had in (superior) butlers rejecting the communities that had created them

(see other stories, as well as his last novel The Outcry of 1911).

A somewhat distant and unlikely variation on the ŖBartleby/Thoreau patternŗ is

Faulknerřs ŖThat Evening Sunŗ: the employee here is an African-American woman

positioned by the author both against her employerřs white community and her own

community of blacks; the employing community is mostly made up of children, so we

have to accept their limited understanding; and, third, the heroineřs irrational ways are



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more like Bartlebyřs tan Brooksmithřs, but also coming closer to the invisibility of Mr.

Greenŕwhich she all but cherishes.

Nancyřs white Ŗcompanionsŗ are a Faulknerian family representing the

dissolution of Southern aristocracy, drowning in their indifference to the crippling fears of

one of their black employees; Mr. Jason Compson is cold and detached; Mrs. Compson is

whining and neurotic in her bigotry; Quentin Compson is calm and rational, both as a 24-

year old young man who remembers, and as a remembered 9-year old witnessing the

central episode concerning Nancyřs fear of Jesus; still, more than Nancyřs fate, he is

remarkably interested in who will do the familyřs laundry after her death; then, inquisitive

and daring Caddy is nine, and obnoxious Jason is five. Like their whole society, the

Compsons are corrupt and, moreover, the children do not understand most of the things

happening in the story, like: why Nancy gets several teeth knocked out by Mr. Stovall, the

Baptist deacon, and another Ŗcompanionŗ; why Nancy tries to hang herself while in

prison; why she carries a watermelon under her dress; or even the abject horror she

suffers.

Then there is Jesus, a short black man with a razor scar down his face and a razor

in his pocket; old Aunt Rachel, probably Jesusř mother; Dilsey, the Compsonsř cook,

whom Nancy replaces while she is taken sick; the jailer, who believes that Ŗno nigger

would try to commit suicide unless he was full of cocaine, because a nigger full of

cocaine wasnřt a nigger any longer;ŗ the above-mentioned deacon and Mr. Lovelady, who

collected the Negro insurance; a white-and-black but mostly black world that Nancy

seems sick and tired of.

Nancy, the one listening to a different drummer, is the washerwoman whom

Jesus, her husband, suspects of being pregnant with a white manřs child, so he leaves her,

only Nancy is worried stiff about going home at night, being paralyzed with fear that he

will kill her; to a certain extent, Mr. Compsonŕand his childrenŕtry to help her, only

her superstition tells her she should rather die. Fifteen years agoŕin story timeŕthe

Compson children liked to watch Nancy carry laundry on her head because she could

balance her bundle while crawling through fences or walking down in ditches and then

out of them; so, not unlike Bartleby or Brooksmith, she is not lacking in

accomplishments.

Nancyřs nay-saying to existence itself comes from her not blaming Jesus as she

knows he is justified in using a razor on her for cheating on him; she is no longer in

control of her fate: ŖI aint nothing but a nigger… I aint none of my fault…ŗ is repeated

again and again; her sense of doom is unchallengeable: ŖI wont be nothing soon. I going

back where I come from soon.ŗ No wonder, while telling a story to these children, she

projects herself into a queen who comes up out of a ditch to get to her cabin and bar the

door; a consolation also comes from her coffin already being paid for. And the sound she

makesŕŖthat was not singing and not unsingingŗŕwas ŖJeeeeeeeeeeeesus,ŗ referring

both to her killer and her savior; so, left alone by the Compsons whom she refuses to join,

she does not hide herself, she does not bat the door, as she would probably prefer to have

Jesus end her debilitating fear; once isolated, her lifeŕlike Brooksmithřs, but also

Bartlebyřsŕis without value; black, with her eerie eyes in the dark, in front of the fire,

with the open door and the weird sound in her strained voice, she certainly was a ghost.

ŖHerŗ story, first published in The American Mercury in 1931, has its characters

taken from The Sound and the Fury, only they are at an earlier age; at the same time, in

that novel Benjy (highly unreliable, one remembers) refers to Nancyřs bones lying in a

ditch, while the same (?) Nancy is resurrected as a nun in Requiem for a Nun. When

asked about these Ŗinconsistencies,ŗ Faulkner answered in an unsurprisingly characteristic



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way, something like: all these are my charactersŕand mine onlyŕso I can move them

around in my books anyway I like. The title of the story is borrowed from a popular black

spiritual, ŖSaint Louis Blues,ŗ that begins ŖLordy, how I hate to see that evening sun go

down (one story version was ŖThat Evening Sun Go Downŗ). so Nancy, like the singer of

the spiritual, fears the setting sun when Jesus will likely come and slit her throat with his

razor. Originally composed by W. C. Handy in 1914, the song was popularized after the

1930s by such performers as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Count Basie…

It is in the same 1930s that Bellowřs ŖLooking for Mr. Greenŗ is depression

Chicago on a chilly November day; the community of well-wishing Ŗcompanionsŗ is

represented by George Grebe, and David Demarestřs description of him fits the pattern:

ŖGrebeřs stubborn idealism is nothing less than the basic human need to construct the

world according to intelligent, moral principlesŗŕall of which Tulliver Green (Mr. Green

was black) is prepared to fully reject; George Grebe is a relief worker dedicated to start on

a quest for an unemployed, crippled black man in order to deliver a welfare check.

This devotion of the man from the District Relief Station on Prairie Avenueŕa

small, tenacious, persistent 35-year-old lecturer in classical languagesŕis

counterbalanced by his younger supervisor, Mr. Raynor, with a law degree who has a

more lax approach to job workŕor even by that of Mr. Ewing, his chief supervisor. The

conflict is already there: between Grebeřs human (and humane) need to order and make

sense of life according to moral principles, and Greenřs universe, symbolic of lifeřs

amoral disorder, discontinuity, irrationality and mystery; therefore, the clash between

determinism and free will, as in ŖBartleby…ŗ; what we have in fact, again and again, is

the experience of contemporary man in search of his own identity.

For a good quest, Bellow provides a maze of half-collapsed houses, dark small

yards, closed schools, black churches, mounds with a second layer of ruins and dirty

alleys, where the white stranger bound to help the listener to a different drummer meets

quite a number of slum inhabitants: a grocer, a postman, a janitor, a young Negress in an

apartment, old man Winston Field in a wheelchair (who has a scheme for creating black

millionaires), another grocer (an Italian who has a hellish vision of the city with its

chaotic masses of suffering humanity), ten somnambulistic ignorant people in another

apartment, watchmen, jitney drivers, policemen, short-order cooks…, all in this Ŗterrific,

blight-bitten portionŗ of Chicago, between Cottage Grove and Ashlandŕall but Mr.

Green, who proves to be more elusive than Bartleby, Brooksmith, or Nancy.

After a flashback to massive Mrs. Staika and her six children at the Stationŕ

who provides a relevant counterpart to Green, as she always gets from the community

what she wants by putting on a noisy showŕwe are back to Mr. Green, the object of

Grebeřs search, who, in anticipation of his success, thinks of him as either very old or

consumptive, or blind, or in crutches…, i.e. unable to show up and come in person for the

money; since Ŗno one would admit knowing Green,ŗ and since Grebe is convinced Ŗthere

must be a way to find a person,ŗ he starts reasoning: ŖIřve been looking for this man all

afternoon… It seems strange not to be able to find a person to give him something when

youřre looking for him for a good reason. I suppose if I had bad news for him, Iřd find

him quick enough.ŗ

Finally, however, Ŗthe name on the ticket under the broken scoop-shaped

mailbox was Green!ŗ Only instead of a man the relief worker is met by a Ŗheavy woman,

naked and drunkŗŕthis is what he Ŗhad tracked down in his hunting game.ŗ And a short,

even more puzzling dialogue: ŖAre you Mrs. Green?ŗ ŖMaybe I is, and maybe I ainřt.

Who wants to know?ŗ Like two of the narrators before, Grebe considers Ŗhis madnessŗŕ

Ŗřyou silly bastard,ř he said to himself… ŘSo you think you found him… So what? Maybe



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you really did find himŕwhat of it? But it was important that there was a real Mr. Green

whom they /Thoreauřs companions?/ could not keep him from reaching because he

seemed to come as a missionary from hostile appearances…ŗ Like Bartleby, Brooksmith,

or Nancy, Green could fool life with non-existenceŕwith being a ghost that can deny

everything and anything.

ŖLooking for Mr. Greenŗ was published in the Commentary for March 1951 and

included than in the authorřs Mosbyřs Memoirs and Other Stories; since Bellowřs motto

is ŖWhatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might…ŗ/and continues: Ŗfor there

is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou

goest…ŗ(King James Version, Ecclesiastes 9:10) Eusebio Rodriguez concludes his

commentary by showing the story to be Ŗa modern dramatization of Ecclesiastesŗ; and we

can conclude by quoting again Dean Flower: ŖAmerican writers are better at short stories

than at any other literary form /including novels, which all these four writers masterfully

represented/.ŗ

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bellow, Saul, Mosbyřs Memoirs and Other Stories (New York: Viking Press,

1968);

Columbia Literary History of the United States, General Editor Emory Elliott (New

York: Columbia UP, 1988);

Counterparts. Classic and Contemporary American Short Stories, Edited with an

Introduction by Deal Flower (New York: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1971);

Demarest, David, ŖThe Theme of Discontinuity in Saul Bellowřs Fiction: ŘLooking

for Mr. Greenř and ŖA Father-to-be,ř Studies in Short Fiction 6 (Winter 1969), pp.175-

186;

Faulkner, William, Collected Stories of…, (New York: Random House, Inc., 1959);

Fiedler, Leslie, No! in Thunder. Essays on Myth and Literature (Boston: Beacon

Press, 1960);

Friedman, Jonathan, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James (Cambridge,

Cambridge UP, 1998);

Hocks, Richard A., Henry James: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York: Twayne

Publishers, 1990);

James, Henry, The Complete Notebooks of…, ed. Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers

(Oxford: OUP, 1987);

James, Henry, The Lesson of the Master (London: Macmillan, 1892);

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne…, www.melville.org/letter26htm;

Meyerson, Joel et.al. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau

(Cambridge: CUP, 1995);

Norton Anthology of American Literature, The, Ed. Nina Baym et. All., 4th ed.

(New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1995);

Stoehr, Taylor, Nay-saying in Concord: Emerson, Alcott and Thoreau (Hamden,

Conn.: Archon Books, 1979);

Works by or about Henry David Thoreau at the Internet Archive.

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