Literary interlude, with illustrations and notes

When he was about to be taken to his first movie he asked his moth­er what movies were like. “They’re dark in one place and light in anoth­er,” she said. The movie, with Jack Oakie, con­cerned sail­ors. Soon after, he was taken to see The Bat Whispers, in which a man in a cloak turned into a bat.  That night, he dreamed he was lying awake in his bed in his room, and into the door­way came an upright fig­ure in a black cloak and slouch hat, with a wolf’s face. He spent the rest of the night in his par­ents’ bed. His moth­er took him to the movies every Friday even­ing; they went to the same theat­er, no mat­ter what was play­ing. On the way home they bought a box of wheat bis­cuits he espe­cially liked and always arrived in time to hear “The Witch’s Tale, ” the scar­i­est pro­gram on radio. While he listened his moth­er had to stay in sight and he ate a wheat bis­cuit covered in but­ter. On Saturday after­noons when he was older he went to a poor, nearby neigh­bor­hood where there was a theat­er named the Hub, which showed three fea­tures, serials,cartoons, and news­reels, and charged ten cents. The pro­gram star­ted at noon and let out between five and six. He and his friends brought their cap pis­tols to shoot dur­ing the Westerns, cut leath­er from the seats to use in sling­shots, and pissed on the floor of the men’s room. On the way home they roamed the streets and went into stores, the braver boys shoplift­ing in the five-and-ten. One spring dusk they plucked rolls of toi­let paper from a dis­play in front of a gro­cery, undid them, and let them unroll side by side down a hill past the store to see­whose would reach the bot­tom first. In his sum­mer com­munity there was one movie house, with a tin roof, and on rainy days no one could hear the sound track. The bill changed Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; and not a week went by that he did not feel he had to see at least two of the shows, par­tic­u­larly any­thing with Edmund Lowe, Jack Holt, of Laurel and Hardy. His moth­er tried to restrict him to one show a week, but by wheed­ling or deceit he had his way.

 During his last year in gram­mar school a loc­al theat­er named the Casino got a repu­ta­tion as a place to neck on Saturday after­noons; he and his friends tried it occa­sion­ally, real­iz­ing finally that you had to bring your own girl. Word of the Casino reached the pas­tor of the loc­al Catholic church, who com­plained to the man­ager, who hired a mat­ron to walk the aisles of the bal­cony with a flash­light. In high school he and his first ser­i­ous girl friend dis­covered for­eign films; even those they did­n’t enjoy were super­i­or to American films, they main­tained. He went one day with his friend Alex to see Daybreak, with Jean Gabin; mid­way the act­ress Arletty stepped from the shower for an instant of front­al nud­ity. It was so quick and they were so sur­prised neither knew he had not ima­gined it until they chacked with one anoth­er; they stayed to see the pic­ture again, but the frame or frames were miss­ing the second time.  In movie houses on army posts WACs and male officers sat togeth­er in sec­tions barred to enlis­ted men. One even­ing while wait­ing for the lights to go out and the movie to start an enlis­ted man inflated a con­dom and sent it up like a bal­loon; oth­er sol­diers did the same, and soon the house was filled with bob­bing con­dom. One by one the WACs and male officers left, the enlis­ted men cheer­ing as they went. One night after see­ing a Mickey Spillane movie he and his wife were wait­ing for the train on a sub­way plat­form. What he took for a single car col­lect­ing the day’s receipts pulled slowly into the sta­tion. Suddenly he was sure there would be a rob­bery; he remembered hav­ing noticed men care­fully spaced wait­ing on the stairs near the change booth and along the plat­form. Instead of stop­ping, the train speeded up. He thought he heard shots, pushed his wife against the wall, and covered her with his body. When he pulled away he saw that no one was dis­turbed, and if they had noticed prob­ably thought that he and his wife were neck­ing. At a drunk­en party he was intro­duced to a well-known woman film crit­ic. He said he wanted to test her taste and put to her pairs for pref­er­ence. He agreed with all her choices and finally said, “Ritz Brothers, Marx Brothers.” “Ritz,” she shouted; they embraced and pledged friend­ship for life. She invited him soon after to see Deep Throat, giggled through­out, and was shushed by men in the audi­ence. As they were leav­ing the theat­er they walked through a nar­row pas­sage by the men’s room; a burly, pimpled boy emerged and rubbed him­self against her. She elbowed the boy in the chest and giggled. This was the first por­no­graph­ic film he had seen, and later at din­ner she said he was lucky to have lost his cherry to one of the best. Now only at the invit­a­tion of oth­ers does he go to a movie. Occasionally he watches movies on tele­vi­sion; some­times, if he is drink­ing, one after the oth­er till dawn. The older he gets the more dif­fi­cult it will become to be drawn into a movie’s fic­tion; either he has seen sim­il­ar movies before or the movie­makers seems to know less about life than he. 

—Charles Simmons, Wrinkles, 1978

Each of this book’s 44 sec­tions, each of a single para­graph, deals with a par­tic­u­lar aspect of its unnamed prot­ag­on­ist’s life. That its unnamed prot­ag­on­ist bears a cer­tain resemb­lance to Simmons him­self, who at the time of its pub­lic­a­tion was push­ing 60 and an edit­or at the New York Times Book Review, should hardly be con­sidered sur­pris­ing. You can find out more at, where else, The Neglected Book Page. 

A per­us­al of the DVD of Daybreak aka Le Jour Se Leve, recently giv­en a stand-alone release in Criterion’s Essential Art House line, reveals no Arletty nud­ity, alas. She’s in a robe a lot, though. The illus­tra­tion above is as close as it gets.

I know what you’re think­ing: “Well-known woman film crit­ic, huh?” And who can blame you. I cite without com­ment this pas­sage from you-know-who’s review of Blow Up, pub­lished February 11, 1967 in The New Republic: “Some years ago I atten­ded an even­ing of mime by Marcel Marceau, an elab­or­ate exer­cise in aes­thet­ic puri­fic­a­tion dur­ing which the audi­ence kept applaud­ing its own appre­ci­ation of cul­ture and beauty, i.e., every time they thought they recog­nized what was sup­posed to be going on. It had been bad enough when Chaplin or Harpo Marx pulled this beauty-of-pathos stuff, and a whole even­ing of it was truly intol­er­able. But after­wards, it just would­n’t do to say some­thing like ‘I prefer the Ritz Brothers’ (though I do, I pas­sion­ately do).”