Man Hungry by Donald E Westlake

Author:Donald E Westlake [Westlake, Donald E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

6

The situation remained unchanged for three more weeks. Dave Markham avoided her now, not looking at her when they were in class together, or when they were both in Blake’s living room on Friday evenings. Ann Shallcross was always there, playing hostess, being sweet and unobtrusive, and Janice grew to hate the sight of her. As for Annette, Janice heard from her twice. First, a pathetic, scribbled, misspelled letter that Janice threw away half-read, as soon as she saw that Annette was whining on about running away together again. The second time was another phone call, Annette tearfully wondering why Janice hadn’t answered her letter. Her mother was home this time, sitting in the next room and watching television, and Janice had a difficult time talking to Annette. She finally said, “Goodbye for now,” and hung up while Annette was still talking. She waited around the house for a while, to see if the stupid girl would call back, but she didn’t. Janice breathed a sigh of relief, and wondered if Annette were finally getting it through her thick head that she wasn’t supposed to get in touch with Janice at all.

The Friday night sessions at Blake’s apartment were uniformly boring, but Janice didn’t miss a one of them. One of these weeks, Ann Shallcross wouldn’t be there. But every week, there she was, smiling her greetings at the head of the stairs, and every week Janice smiled back and wished the stupid woman would drop dead.

Finally, on the fourth Friday night, something happened that gave her renewed hope. Ann was there, of course, as she always was, hovering in the background with a trayful of soft drinks and coldcut sandwiches, and Janice sat on the edge of the conversation, half-listening and only rarely speaking. Dave Markham continued to be a thorn in everyone’s side, and he invariably showed up with some pulp magazine which contained, he swore, one of the best short stories ever written. Blake had asked him to read one of the stories aloud once, and the rest of the class had proceeded to rip it to shreds, from the viewpoints of writing style, use of symbols, characterization, depth of meaning and the author’s purpose, but that hadn’t stopped Dave. He was back the next week, with another undiscovered masterpiece. He himself had now sold a second of his science-fiction stories, and he was obviously trying to raise the value of his own work by claiming literary status for similar works in the same field.

Oddly enough, Blake was closer to agreeing with Dave than were any of the other students, all of whom considered Dave’s magazines beneath their consideration. But Blake, in principle, agreed with Dave’s initial contention. Practically all great works of literature, claimed Dave and agreed Blake, have come out of the popular or ‘commercial’ writing of their day. Don Quixote, The Canterbury Tales, Oedipus Rex, the works of Shakespeare, all were written with popular appeal in mind. Those who wrote exclusively for the intellectuals of their own day were almost invariably ignored by the intellectuals of later ages.

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