Deadline for a Critic

reached you?”

“I don’t know; I guess it was just the final straw. Anyway, I sent him a nasty letter.”

“Uh-oh. What’s that gonna do to your career?”

Valerie smiled briefly. “Honey, my ‘career’ is taking care of you and our kids. Oh, I know once upon a time, Groendal had a shot at my career and hit it dead center. He can’t hurt me anymore, much as he still tries. But I can reach him. I mean really reach him: scare the hell out of him.”

“You mean like old Scrooge in A Christmas Carol?”

“That’s the ticket. It’s about time somebody let that rotten creep know that, to some extent, we all live in glass houses. And some of us have some pretty big rocks to throw.”

“Uh-oh, there go the lights. The concert’s about to start.”

“Finally!” Harison said. “We’re about to get started. About time.”

“I can hardly wait.” Groendal’s voice dripped sarcasm.

Harison turned one final time to view the near-capacity audience. “Uh-oh! They’re just coming in now. In the balcony.”

“Who?”

“Charlie and Lil Hogan.”

“That piece of trash. He’d be better off staying home and working on a novel. Not that it would do any good. No matter what he tries, it’s still going to be a sow’s ear.”

“Hurry up! The lights are dimming; the concert’s about to start” Lil Hogan looked about frantically, trying to locate their seats.

“It’s all right,” Charlie assured her, “we’ve still got a couple of minutes.” He handed their stubs to an usherette, who led them down the aisle and indicated two empty seats toward the middle of the row.

“Excuse me,” Lil said repeatedly as she led the way around and past a series of legs. “Well, here we are,” she remarked as she sat down.

“Lil, you’re just going to have to get more organized. We can’t keep arriving places at the last minute. My heart won’t take the strain.” He was kidding and she knew it.

“Your heart’s okay, Charlie. And nobody knows that better than I. Unfortunately,” she nodded toward the main floor of the gradually darkening hall, “Ridley Groendal’s heart seems to be every bit as good as yours.”

“What’s that? Oh, my God, there he is!” Hogan hesitated in lowering himself into his seat. Directed by his wife’s gaze, he identified Groendal in the diminished light.

“He seems to have survived your letter,” Lil said.

“If truth be known, I don’t give a damn whether he survived or not. The thing is, I feel better. I’ve been keeping a whole bunch of things bottled up for so many years. It just felt good to get them off my chest. But I’m not done with that bastard yet.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I thought it was high time somebody told him off—for all the good it’ll do. I think he’s one of those people who are so nasty to the core that they can’t be reached.”

“There goes the curtain, Lil.”

“Right. Let’s enjoy the concert until we read Ridley C. Groendal and find out how lousy it was.”

“Damn!”

2

It was an unpretentious building, a squat, two-story gray structure near the corner of Jefferson and the Chrysler Freeway. It was particularly unprepossessing considering the enormous influence of the Suburban Reporter, for which the little building was headquarters.

It had not always been thus.

The Reporter had begun in the mid-twentieth century as an advertisers’ and buyers’ guide. The brainchild of Jonathan Dunn, it was, in the beginning, a shoestring operation—literally. Shoelaces were used to hold together cigar boxes that contained the monthly receipts.

As it turned out, the Reporter’s very survival was attributable to the determination, tenacity, and talent of Jonathan Dunn. He, almost alone, nursed it through its vicissitudes and growing pains as well as the insults and derogations directed at it. “Legitimate” journalists, i.e., editors and staff writers at Detroit’s daily metropolitan newspapers, invariably referred to the Reporter, if at all, as the “Shoppers’ Guide.”

Generally, those in the editorial section of almost any publication tend to think that anyone can sell advertising while it takes rare talent to “write.” So there is a tendency on the part of reporters, editors, and columnists to look down pseudoaristocratic noses at a publication composed almost entirely of ads.

Thus, while the “big” papers were snickering at the Suburban Reporter, this modest “shoppers’ guide” was growing, imperceptibly at first, then like Topsy.

It expanded from a monthly to a weekly (more bad jokes, puns on weekly vs. weakly) to twice weekly.

Then, over the years, many heavy local advertisers left Detroit for the suburbs. There they found an indigenous publication geared precisely to their desires.

Now, positions were nearly reversed. The big dailies began to scramble for ads in direct competition with the maligned Suburban Reporter. Once a week, the News and the Free Press published special regional sections. But an impartial observer would have to conclude that the Reporter had been there first.

And as the Reporter grew fat, its editorial sections began to increase both in size and influence. While the pay scale and fringe benefits did not compare favorably with all that the unions had won at the dailies over the years, the impact of reportage and opinion was in a similar, if not the same, ballpark.

An ideal vehicle then, for a Ridley C. Groendal.

Groendal’s career at the New York Herald had been terminated somewhat prematurely. He could have retired at age sixty-five. By mutual agreement he might have continued virtually interminably. As it happened, management forced him into retirement at age fifty-seven. It was not a happy parting but it was one whose details were carefully worked out if not to everyone’s delight, at least to everyone’s minimal satisfaction.

The Herald had grown most unhappy with Groendal’s work over the years. In the beginning, he had seemed to possess all the erudition of which he was prone to boast. As time passed, it became evident to informed readers as well as to management at the paper that what Groendal possessed was the appropriate jargon required for criticism of the various art forms. He also manifested a disgust, at times an outright loathing, for most artists, writers, and performers.

In the early days it was the acid flowing from his pen that had attracted both his editors and readers; he may have caused great pain among the fine arts community but he was seldom dull.

As he did battle with the years, however, he grew predictable and effete. Eventually, the complaints and protests of the fine arts community—and its moneyed patrons—touched a chord with management. It was both the quantity and quality of protest that did the trick.

Management determined that Groendal must go. That decision was followed by weeks of meetings dedicated to the question of how to get rid of him. For one, his position was protected by contract. And two, a knockdown, drag-out war was an unseemly sort of wrangle for the staid Herald to get into with any of its employees. Finally, no way did the Herald wish to, in effect, admit that its principal critic was by and large a fraud.

However, management has ways of inducing employees, even those protected by contract, to leave. While employed at the same publication and receiving the same pay, writers can be given rotten assignments. They can be put on the graveyard shift. They can be shunted to inferior work space. There are countless ways of prompting resignation or retirement, with neither an admission of administrative blunder nor the payment of enormous severance.

Ridley Groendal was as aware as anyone else in the business of the myriad avenues of coercion open to management. When the writing on the wall became crystal clear, Groendal wisely decided to cut his losses. He