told me she 'just got tired of farmin', I guess. Kind of hated to give up my ponies, but people was beginning to say it was too hard of a life for Ronnie and I guess they was right.' C.M.K.) Coincidence? Perhaps. I went upstairs with the paper and put my feet up again. I could try a hundred more piddling tests if I wished, but why waste time? If there was anything to it, I could type out The Answer in about two hundred words, drive to town, tack it on the bulletin board outside the firehouse and—snowball. Avalanche!
I didn't do it, of course—for the same reason I haven't put down the two hundred words of The Answer yet on a couple of these cigarette papers. It's rather dreadful—isn't it—that I haven't done so, that a simple feasible plan to ensure peace, progress and equality of opportunity among all mankind, may be lost to the world if, say, a big meteorite hits the asylum in the next couple of minutes. But—I'm a writer. There's a touch of intellectual sadism in us. We like to dominate the reader as a matador dominates the bull; we like to tease and mystify and at last show what great souls we are by generously flipping up the shade and letting the sunshine in. Don't worry. Read on. You will come to The Answer in the proper artistic place for it. (At this point I wish fervently to dissociate myself from the attitudes Corwin attributes to our profession. He had—has, I hope—his eccentricities, and I consider it inexcusable of him to tar us all with his personal brush. I could point out, for example, that he once laboriously cultivated a 16th Century handwriting which was utterly illegible to the modern reader. The only reason apparent for this, as for so many of his traits, seemed to be a wish to annoy as many people as possible. C.M.K.)
Yes; I am a writer. A matador does not show up in the bull ring with a tommy gun and a writer doesn't do things the simple, direct way. He makes the people writhe a little first. So I called Fred Greenwald. Fred had been after me for a while to speak at one of the Thursday Rotary meetings and I'd been reluctant to set a date. I have a little speech for such occasions, 'The Business of Being a Writer'—all about the archaic royalty system of payment, the difficulty of proving business expenses, the Margaret Mitchell tax law and how it badly needs improvement, what copyright is and isn't. I pass a few galley sheets down the table and generally get a good laugh by holding up a Doubleday book contract, silently turning it over so they can see how the fine print goes on and on, and then flipping it open so they see there's twice as much fine print as they thought there was. I had done my stuff for Oswego Rotary, Horseheads Rotary and Cannon Hole Rotary; now Fred wanted me to do it for Painted Post Rotary.
So I phoned him and said I'd be willing to speak this coming Thursday. 'Good,' he said. On a discovery I'd made about the philosophy and technique of administration and interpersonal relationships, I said. He sort of choked up and said, 'Well, we're broadminded here.'
I've got to start cutting this. I have several packs of cigarette papers left but not enough to cover the high spots if I'm to do them justice.
Let's just say the announcement of my speech was run in the Tuesday paper (It was. C.M.K.) and skip to Wednesday, my place, about 7:30
P.M. Dinner was just over and my wife and I were going to walk out and see how (At this point I wish to insert a special note concerning some difficulty I had in obtaining the next four papers. They got somehow into the hands of a certain literary agent who is famous for a sort of
'finders-keepers' attitude more appropriate to the eighth grade than to the law of literary property. In disregard of the fact that Corwin retained physical ownership of the papers and literary rights thereto, and that I as the addressee possessed all other rights, he was blandly endeavouring to sell them to various magazines as 'curious fragments from Corwin's desk'. Like most people, I abhor lawsuits; that's the fact this agent lives on. I met his outrageous price of five cents a word 'plus postage (!).' I should add that I have not heard of any attempt by this gentleman to locate Corwin or his heirs in order to turn over the proceeds of the sale, less commission. C.M.K.) the new fruit trees were doing fine when a car came bumping down our road and stopped at our garden fence gate.
'See what they want and shove them on their way,' said my wife. 'We haven't got much daylight left.' She peered through the kitchen window at the car, blinked, rubbed her eyes and peered again. She said uncertainly: 'It looks like—no! Can't be.' I went out to the car.
'Anything I can do for you?' I asked the two men hi the front seat.
Then I recognized them. One of them was about my age, a why lad in a T-shirt. The other man was plump and graying and ministerial, but jolly. They were unmistakable; they had looked out at me—one scowling, the other smiling—from a hundred book ads. It was almost incredible that they knew each other, but there they were sharing a car.
I greeted them by name and said: 'This is odd. I happen to be a writer myself. I've never shared the bestseller list with you two, but—'
The plump ministerial man tut-tutted. 'You are thinking negatively,'
he chided me. 'Think of what you have accomplished. You own this lovely home, the valuation of which has just been raised two thousand dollars due entirely to the hard work and frugality of you and your lovely wife; you give innocent pleasure to thousands with your clever novels; you help to keep the good local merchants going with your patronage. Not least, you have fought for your country in the wars and you support it with your taxes.'
The man in the T-shirt said raspily: 'Even if you didn't have the dough to settle in full on April 15 and will have to pay six per cent per month interest on the unpaid balance when and if you ever do pay it, you poor shnook.'
The plump man said, distressed: 'Please, Michael—you are not thinking positively. This is neither the time nor the place—'
'What's going on?' I demanded. Because I hadn't even told my wife I'd been a little short on the '55 federal tax.
'Let's go inna house,' said the T-shirted man. He got out of the car, brushed my gate open and walked coolly down the path to the kitchen door. The plump man followed, sniffing our rose-scented garden air appreciatively, and I came last of all, on wobbly legs.
When we filed in my wife said: 'My God. It is them.'
The man in the T-shirt said: 'Hiya, babe,' and stared at her breasts.
The plump man said: 'May I compliment you, my dear, for a splendid rose garden. Quite unusual for this altitude.'
'Thanks,' she said faintly, beginning to rally. 'But it's quite easy when your neighbors keep horses.'
'Haw!' snorted the man in the T-shirt. 'That's the stuff, babe. You grow roses like I write books. Give 'em plenty of—'
'Michael!' said the plump man.
'Look, you,' my wife said to me. 'Would you mind telling me what this is all about? I never knew you knew Dr.—'
'I don't,' I said helplessly. 'They seem to want to talk to me.'
'Let us adjourn to your sanctum sanctorum,' said the plump man archly, and we went upstairs. The T-shirted man sat on the couch, the plump fellow sat in the club chair and I collapsed on the swivel chair in front of the typewriter. 'Drink, anybody?' I asked, wanting one myself.
'Sherry, brandy, rye, straight angostura?'
'Never touch the stinking stuff,' grunted the man in the T-shirt.
'I would enjoy a nip of brandy,' said the big man. We each had one straight, no chasers, and he got down to business with: 'I suppose you have discovered The Diagonal Relationship?'
I thought about The Answer, and decided that The Diagonal Relationship would be a very good name for it, too. 'Yes,' I said. 'I guess I have. Have you?'
'I have. So has Michael here. So have one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-four writers. If you'd like to know who they are, pick the one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-four top-income men of the ten thousand free-lance writers in this country and you have your men. The Diagonal Relationship is discovered on an average of three times a year by rising writers.'
'Writers,' I said. 'Good God, why writers? Why not economists, psychologists, mathematicians—real thinkers?'
He said: 'A writer's mind is an awesome thing, Corwin. What went into your discovery of The Diagonal Relationship?'
I thought a bit. 'I'm doing a Civil War thing about Burnside's Bomb,' I said, 'and I realized that Grant could have sent in fresh troops but didn't because Halleck used to drive him crazy by telegraphic masterminding of his
