It was five years ago. It was Boston. It was late. I was hungry. I walked from my room to the restaurant adjoining the hotel at which I was staying with the intention of reading some of the papers handed out earlier in that day at a conference on contemporary literature. I was looking forward to a light meal and a couple cups of coffee before turning in early to catch my flight home.
The restaurant's bar was the sort that tried very hard to look like a local tavern, but failed miserably in some manner that cannot be described. Sure, the bar sat squarely in the middle of the room, stately wooden barstools surrounding all four sides. A gleaming brass railing bordered the bar and another brass railing was attached down below as a footrest. The walls were lined by high-backed booths with small lights above the tables to allow people to, say, read the menu, have a face to face conversation with the person in front of them or be sure of where the hell the waiter put their food down since, aside from the actual bar and the booths, the room did not appear to be lit in any way.
Within this place, the sort of knickknacks and bric-a-brac that characterize taverns was all around, hanging on walls or sitting on shelves, but it still had that air of someplace that would always come up short of hip and cool. Maybe it was the name, McSchmidt's, or the sign over the door announcing they had been open since 1987. Overall, the place could not help but strike me as having an almost comical case of phony, like a Mad magazine version of a stereotypical Boston tavern.
Either way, it was in one of the aforementioned booths where they kept the light fixtures hidden that I sat down to do some reading and eating. I was well into a paper making some point or another about Stephen King, as well as a particularly uneventful order of chicken vermicelli, when something caught my eye.
I should say, rather, that someone caught my eye, but I at first thought it was something. It appeared to be an extremely rumpled pile of black laundry sipping a beer, but after further examination, the laundry had the face of someone very familiar. I pulled out the book I carried in my satchel to examine it. I checked the picture on the back and, yes, that pile had the same thin, but not quite gaunt, face, dark hair, and large Austrian nose as Samuel Bell.
Earlier that day I had, in fact, given a talk trumpeting the merits of Mr. Bell to a room full of my colleagues. My speeches usually weren't paid much attention, since he worked mostly in the realm of purely fictional, often farcical, topics, not the sort of current events or past sins English professors often prefer. However, I was still quite convinced that he was a very good, perhaps even great, writer. Thus, I was understandably excited at an opportunity to meet and talk to someone I held in such high esteem. Perhaps I could even use some information about this recluse in my lectures.
After finishing my meal, I walked over to the rumpled heap of a hero and asked him, "Excuse me, but are you who I think you are?"
"I suppose that depends on whether you think I'm Sam Bell or not," he replied.
After I told him that was exactly who I thought he was, he was nice enough to confirm my suspicions. He asked me my name, I replied with the usual, "I'm Dr. Alan Mobley. I'm a professor of contemporary literature at the University of Missouri."
An oddly hopeful expression crossed his face, then apparently it thought better of its location and decided to slink off to some other part of the room, leaving a weighted look behind. I was unsure what to make of it, but he invited me to sit down anyway. Some part of me told me I would best refuse and go do some more reading, but judgment prevailed over my better instinct and I slid onto the barstool next to him.
The tall, portly bartender walked over and asked me if I wanted anything to drink. I replied with a, "No thank you, coffee will be fine." He did not say anything, but responded with a thin little smile under his thick, graying, bartender mustache and a knowing happiness around the eyes I did not at all like the look of. It made me feel like I was about to tip him much more than fifteen percent. With a quick little nod, he tended to another part of the bar.
"So, Dr. Mobley, what brings you to this place in the town of tea parties?" the novelist asked me.
I explained about the conference and the fact that my hotel was attached to the restaurant and needing some food and drink so as to do some reading and going to bed early so I would be awake when I should be getting on my flight tomorrow, since I had classes to teach, papers to grade and a hard time waking up early anyway, so I just walked down here since it was so close and I'm sorry to blabber like this, and why was he here?
"I like the place," he replied gloomily into his mug.
"I see." I'd never thought the idea of liking someplace to be so depressing. Of course if you live in Boston, as Bell does, and you were hanging out at someplace this bad, as Bell was, maybe it could be. After some silence, I commented, "I really enjoy your work."
A low, "Mmmmm," was his reply, followed soon after with, "Yes, I suppose you do."
"I actually use some of your novels in my classes."
"Everybody does," he said. I did not know how everybody would be using his novels in classes, I didn't think that many people had classes to teach, but I eventually figured out that he was continuing his previous comment, not the thread I had offered.
"Well, you write some very good stuff."
"And I'm sure you found it extremely..." he added a forlorn pause, "funny."
Unsure as to what to say to this I decided on, "Yes, I think it's wonderful comedy." I felt more like apologizing.
"Everybody does," he repeated.
I was not grasping something here. "You don't seem happy about it," I said, in an effort to find out what it was I was not grasping.
He paused, then turned and looked at me with a mournful gaze that nearly knocked me off my stool. "I wasn't trying to write comedy, I was writing serious fiction," he finally said. Then he turned his attention mercifully back to his drink and took a large gulp.
I looked back at him and blinked a few times, incapable of saying anything. I finally pulled it together with the statement, "Ah."
He continued. "My first seven books, they were all meant to be serious."
I blinked twice more.
"I poured my frustrations and anger into those."
Blink. Blink.
"The imagery, the characterization, the complex metaphors, all those brilliant devices meant to root out those which are the wrongs in this world, I set them on that page to build the painful scenes of a world gone mad, not," he shuddered, "comedy."
Blink. Blink.
"I mean," Bell seethed, "don't you realize there are people starving in Armenia!?"
All this blinking practice was getting tiring, so I decided this load of malarkey would be much easier to swallow if I washed it down with something harder than a cup o' joe. I turned to catch the attention of the bartender, but he was already standing in front of me saying, "Yes sir, can I help you?"
"A shot of Bushmills if you please," I responded.
With a "Certainly sir" I was given said whiskey and immediately tossed it down.
I had no idea what the Armenians had to do with anything in Bell's first seven books. As a matter of fact, I still don't, but I had to ask, "The Armenians?"
"You know, the prologue of my first book."
"Ah," I paused, "the philosophical conversation between Aristotle and Goethe as to why you should never pet a burning dog."
"Yes."
"What do Armenians have to do with petting dogs, burning or otherwise?"
"If I have to explain it, you wouldn't understand."
Somehow I figured he would answer that way. "Give me a try, I'm paid to deal with metaphor."
"Hmph," he harrumphed haughtily then crawled back into his quiet shell.
I decided against asking more questions regarding any sort of Armenians so I tried a different tack, but not before having another Bushmills.
"So why don't you try writing comedy?" I asked him.
"I did," he said, slightly ired.
It was then that I noticed the bartender placing another drink, a double no less, in front me. I informed him that I hadn't ordered it, and he told me not to worry, then he smiled that little smile that made me more than half expect cartoon dollar signs to pop up in his eyeballs. I then turned my attention back to Mr. Bell.
"So how did your effort at comedy go?" I asked.
"Horribly," Bell replied.
"How's that?"
"It was referred to as 'gripping', a 'masterpiece of modern literature,' and a 'horrible glimpse into the darker side of the human nature of greed.'"
"That would be your eighth book," I assumed aloud.
"Yes," he replied.
I braced myself for the coming exchange. "That Which Is Tainted," I stated in an almost questioning manner.
"Yes," he replied flatly.
"Was a comedy."
"Yes."
"About clubbing baby seals in Nova Scotia."
"Exactly."
"Ah." The double went down comparatively easy at that point.
After putting down the glass more slowly than I had drained it, I waded back into conversation with, "I'm afraid to ask what the funny parts were."
"It was all funny!" he answered back in a frustratedly quiet hiss, then put his face in his hands and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips.
"I can't say as I can understand how."
"The manner in which I wrote it was funny."
"The descriptions of broken, furry little bodies, blood staining the snow, the squeals of the dying young. That was comedy?"
"It had an ironic wit."
"Where?"
"Everywhere!" he said and turned his attention back to his beer.
Uncomfortable pauses were a rather relieving part of conversing with this gentleman, since the actual conversation was much less comfortable. But, not unlike passing a car wreck, you just have to turn back to find out more.
"So if you are so constantly misunderstood, why do you keep writing?" I asked, trying to remove visions of jackknifed tractor-trailers from my head.
"Because I failed at what I really want to do."
"What do you really want to do?" I asked, more than a little hesitantly.
"Be a rodeo clown."
Thunk.
Unsure whether to laugh or simply nod and say, "I see," I turned to get the bartender and noticed what that "Thunk" sound was, which was another double, only this time on the rocks. I took a few thoughtful sips from my drink, more than happy to have this respite from the conversational equivalent of Little Big Horn.
"A rodeo clown?" I eventually asked.
"Yes," he solemnly replied before taking another long pull from his beer.
"Why would you want to be a rodeo clown?"
"Just to feel like I'm making a difference, changing people's lives, helping out where help is needed."
"And That Which Is Tainted didn't make you feel like you made a difference?"
"No."
"After it came out, Greenpeace donations increased by thirty-five percent," I pointed out, trying very hard to keep calm.
"Yes."
"But being a rodeo clown would make you feel like you made a difference to someone," I continued. The alcohol was not making it any easier to avoid yelling this at him.
"Yes."
"I'm getting a headache."
"But I wasn't trying to do that."
"I'd hope not," I said rather tersely.
"I didn't try to increase donations to humane organizations, I tried to write something funny. I'm sick to death of being the best writer I'm not trying to be."
Another of Bell's conversational shifts to a previous topic was not helping my headache. In fact, I was hoping this Sam Bell would be leaving now that his mug was almost empty.
"But you're a fantastic writer. Take it for what it's worth." I said in an effort to return some sanity to this exchange. The word 'return', however, implies that something was present previously.
"Does it really matter though, in the long run?"
"Compared to being chased into barrels by bulls?" I asked sarcastically.
"Yes, compared to that," he responded.
"I think it matters a lot more than that."
"You don't understand, you'll never understand, nobody will," he said as he stared sullenly at his drink. With his constant sulking and refusal to explain what he was yammering on about, I couldn't decide if I was talking to a misunderstood genius or a childish moron.
We sat there in silence for a little bit longer until he finally said in a way that could not have been less sincere, "Well, thanks for the talk and all, but I've really got to go." With that, he polished off the last of his beer.
I couldn't have been more relieved than when I heard this. "Okay, well, good luck," I told him. I figured either "See you later" or "Nice talking to you" would be the incorrect thing to say since I wouldn't and it wasn't.
Samuel slithered off his stool but not before neglecting to pay for his beer, thus sticking me with the tab. I called the bartender over.
"Excuse me," I said, "but you seem to be rather familiar with conversations with Mr. Bell. Any idea as to what I should do now?"
"Well, sir," the bartender replied, "I would recommend getting very drunk and forgetting the whole thing ever happened."
I thanked the bartender, made a valiant attempt to take his advice, tipped him an absurd percentage of my tab and staggered back to bed.
I did not, in fact, drink myself into enough of a stupor to forget the conversation, but I did drink enough to ensure I woke up both after my check-out time, for which I had to pay a fee, and after my flight left, which led to an obvious set of problems all their own. It was in the airport terminal, hung over and desperately trying to get on another flight home, that I decided on a new course of action. I renewed my fight, with even greater fervor, to get Samuel Bell's work noticed. It was no longer out of respect for his talents and certainly not out of respect for him. I merely hoped he would hear my arguments extolling the greatness of his work, and I hoped like hell they would piss him off.