page cites are to the Penguin Books paperback edition (1985)
This is the part in which the great art critic Victor Wulpy (modeled after Bellow's University of Chicago colleague Harold Rosenberg) encounters an old acquaintance, Larry Wrangel, a Hollywood sci-fi film producer, while stuck in the airport in Buffalo ...
--oOo--
background, p.98:
Victor tells Katrina, his traveling companion ...
about a note he had received at the hotel from a fellow he had known years ago – a surprise that did not please him. “He takes the tone of an old chum. Wonderful to meet again after thirty years. He happens to be in town. And good old Greenwich Village – I hate the revival of these relationships that never were. Meantime, it's true, he's become quite a celebrity.”
“Would I know the name?”
“Larry Wrangel. He had a recent success with a film called The Kronos Factor. Same type as 2001 or Star Wars.”
“Of course,” said Katrina. “That's the Wrangel who was featured in People magazine. A late-in-life success, they called him. Ten years ago he was still making porno movies. Interesting.”
She spoke cautiously, having disgraced herself in San Francisco. Even now she couldn't be sure that Victor had forgiven her for dragging him to see M*A*S*H. Somewhere in his mental accounts there was a black mark still. Bad taste approaching criminality, he had once said. “He must be very rich. The piece in People said that his picture grossed four hundred million. Did he attend your lecture?”
“He wrote that he had an engagement, so he might be a bit late, and could we have a drink afterwards. He gave a number, but I didn't call.”
“You were what—tired? disgruntled?”
“In the old days he was bearable for about ten minutes at a time—just a character who longed to be taken seriously. The type that bores you most when he's most earnest. He came from the Midwest to study philosophy at NYU and he took up with the painters at the Cedar bar and the writers on Hudson Street. I remember him, all right—a little guy, quirky, shrewd, offbeat. I think he supported himself by writing continuity for the comic books—Buck Rogers, Batman, Flash Gordon. He carried a scribbler in his zipper jacket and jotted down plot ideas. I lost track of him, and I don't care to find the track again....”
--oOo--
p. 136:
They now saw Victor working his way back to the booth, and Wrangel signaled to the waitress to serve their lunch. The glazed orange duck looked downright dangerous. Circles of fat swam in the spiced gravy. Famished, Victor attacked his food. His whiskey glass was soon fingerprinted with grease. He tore up his rolls over the dish and spooned up the fatty sops. He was irritable.
Wrangel tried to make conversation, as a host should do. Victor gave him a gloomy if not sinister look – a glare, to be more accurate – when Wrangel began to point out connections between cartoons and abstract ideas. When people spoke of ideas as “clear,” didn't they mean reductive? Human beings, in reduction, represented as things. Acceptable enough when they were funny. But suppose the intention wasn't funny, as shorthand representations of the human often were, then you got an abstract condensation for the Modern theme. Take Picasso and Daumier as caricaturists (much deference in this to Victor, the expert). It might be fair to say that Daumier treated a social subject: the middle class, the courtroom. Picasso didn't. In Picasso you had the flavor of nihilism that went with increased abstraction. Wrangel in his rolls of fur and his chin supported by silk scarf and cotton bandanna was nervous, insecure of tone, twitching.
“What's this about reason?” said Victor. “First you tell me that ideas are trivial, they're dead, and then what do you do but discuss ideas with me?”
“There's no contradiction, is there, if I say that abstract ideas and caricature go together?”
“I have little interest in discussing this,” said Victor. “It'll keep until you get back to California, won't it?”
“I suppose it will.”
“Well, then, stow it. Skip it. Stuff it.”
“It's a pity that my success in sci-fi should be held against me. Actually I've had a better than average training in philosophy.”
“Well, I'm not in the mood for philosophy. And I don't want to discuss the nihilism that goes with reason. I figure you've done enough to f___ up the consciousness of millions of people with this mishmash of astrophysics and divinity that has made you so famous. Your trouble is that you'd like to sneak up on real seriousness. Well, you've already made your contribution. Your statement is on the record.”
“You yourself have written about ''divine sickness,” Victor. I would suppose that any creature, regardless of his worldly status, had one ticket good for a single admission if he has suffered – if he paid his price.”
But Victor wouldn't hear him out. He made a face so satirical, violent, so killing that Katrina would have turned away from it if it hadn't been so extraordinary – an aspect of Victor never manifested before. He drew his lips over his teeth to imitate bare gums. He gabbled in pantomime, not a sound coming out. He let out his tongue like a dog panting. He squeezed his eyes so tight that you couldn't see anything except the millipede brows and lashes. He put his thumbs to the sides of his head and waggled his fingers. Then he slid himself out of the booth, took up the duffel, and started for the door. Katrina, too, stood up. She held Vanessa's fiddle in her arms, saying, “I'd apologize for him if you didn't also know him. He's in very bad shape, Mr. Wrangel, you can see that for yourself. Last year we nearly lost him. And he's in pain every day. Try to remember that. I'm sorry about this. Don't let him get to you.”
“Well, this is a lesson. Of course it makes me very sad. Yes, I see he's in bad shape. Yes, it's a pity.”
It had cut him up, and Katrina's heart went out to Wrangel. “Thank you,” she said, drawing away, turning. She hoped she didn't look too clumsy from the rear.
Victor was waiting for her in the concourse and she spoke to him angrily. “That was bad behavior. I didn't like being a party to it.”
“When he started on me with Daumier and Picasso, I couldn't stand it, not a minute more of it.”
“You feel rotten and you took it out on him.”
He conceded this in silence.
. . .. ... .. . .
staging ...
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