Tours of the Black Clock

40

THE MAGAZINE BUYS THE story for forty dollars. That’s the long and short of it, actually there’s a great deal of fussing and hesitating and general screwing around that goes on several weeks. First they don’t believe I’m really writing stories, because I don’t look like someone who writes stories, then they don’t believe I wrote this particular story, then they’re trying to figure out what to do with a story like this. This then is the second career which comes of standing around Jerry’s newsstand on the afternoon Jerry’s wife had a stroke; and the first career, as Doggie Hanks’ doorman, provides me the resources with which to pursue the second. The second will lead to the third, which will take me away from my country for more than thirty years. But that’s almost two years away: it’s now early 1935. I’m writing for the pulps. The stories are a cut above average and my rate goes up from forty dollars to fifty, but the secret of success is writing lots of stories; I don’t have the energy. Also, I don’t know anything. What do I know? I know how to destroy the manifestations of my youth in a single night. Out of it I write stories I can barely stand to hold in my hands, after which I travel for days inside my own black hour.

T.O.T.B.C.—5