Vol. VI No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF AN
UNSUCCESSFUL REALIST
By ANTHONY J. GUDAITIS
I
HAVE to laugh grimly. I am crazy enough to call myself a realist.
As if the relation of that name to myself as a writer means anything
to anyone. I am totally unknown. I am not dictated by the
popular desires or whims of other people, although I may write of
them. I belong to no particular sect or school of writers that I am
conscious of. I am brazen enough to label myself as one outside the
pale—an outsider, a literary exile, that's what I think I am. But I
genuinely like this idea of being unknown, of being a trifle independent,
of being able to enjoy the complete freedom of the artist; to be
answerable or responsible to no one; to be true to my own views and
virtues and vicesj and my problem is to find time to write and manage
to earn a living at the same time. When the mood moves me I write,
and that is frequently. Sometimes it is a poem, sometimes it is a story,
and sometimes a jumble of words, unholy words, that I attempt to
predict as the outgrowth of a new art. Once in a while I sell something.
A realist? Mentally I look myself over again in as dispassionate
a manner as I can. I find myself living in two worlds, a world
of imagination and a world of reality. I try to be a faithful, realistic
interpreter of both of these worlds—blending or unblending them as
I am tempted. It may be that I casually create a man or woman wholly
from life. Another time I will only take a little from life and allow
my imagination to fertilize the rest. What is the difference? Is one less
true than the other? What is mere fancy could have been, what really
is is often improbable and in passing becomes a dream.
The prostitute who walks the streets, offering pleasure to indiscriminate
men, can feel that she is something tangible in the machine
of existence that has a distinct relation to people and animals and
things. I am much more to be pitied than the prostitute because I lack
practicalness 5 I detest it. I am a supersensitive soul struggling now
with dreams, now with realities. Many times I have only a vague
connection with the world of reality and physical contacts. I seem to be
sunken into a beautiful, horrible abyss that is unlike anything I could
describe. I am a conglomeration which the wind carries here and there
and will finally reduce to nothing.
I go to New York and Chicago in reality and visit Africa and Asia
in my dreams. I converse with real men and with other men I have
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