Vol. VI No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL REALIST
weary. I don't understand that for I am still young and the sites where
I spent younger, sunshiny days ought to give me an added zest. I
become sad and a little dubious over certain precepts. Out in the
outskirts of the town where the woods begin and a sturdy bridge crosses
a little rivulet, I pause to think.
Frenzied, I drop my mask of calmness, giving my mind full reign
to recall and ponder over past events. Forgotten things, buried episodes
suddenly glare out, revive themselves articulately.
I am a young boy again. I am a dreamy-eyed lad whose parents
came from Russia to New England to make money. New England
brings up brawny, practical boys, and cultivates in most of them a love
for nature. I was no exception. With the other boys I went to a large
brick school where I obtained the fundamentals of education. Whenever
I now see the word education I always associate it with a picture
of this red brick building. There were days, however, when there was
no school. Summer days, vacation days. More than a few of them I
spent alone in the woods under a pine tree, softly settled among its
nettles, conjuring fairy tales—it was Utopia to me.
In the town our house was near the cemetery. The lady who
boarded with us ever since I could remember was a consumptive.
Despite her approaching end, she fell voluptuously in love and tasted
of sexual experience a number of times—before she died and was
buried in the cemetery at the back of our house. On stormy winter
nights I used to be scared that her ghost would be blown our way and
enter the house for refuge. One night, sleeping with my father, I
beheld a nude white figure parading about our bedroom. I rubbed my
eyes, pinched myself, and ducked my head under the coverlet a few
times to make sure I was not dreaming. No, I was not. The nude white
figure was there and it was real. Exceedingly frightened, much too
frightened to rouse my father, pretending sleep I fell asleep. On the
morrow and many morrows after that, I believed it was God that
had appeared to me.
What winters we experienced in New England! How cold it was.
My father and mother worked in the factory. I had to prepare my own
simple meals. I am vividly reminded of the first bit of money I made
one season selling papers. It was not very easy work when the streets
were slushy and slippery and cold. Up and down the streets I darted
and charged, yelling the headlines of the latest murder and making
63 *