# "NOTES FOR A NOVEL"

This novel, which I expect to run approximately 100,000 words, will be in the form of a journal kept sporadically over a period of thirty years by Homer Zigler, newspaperman.

His purpose in keeping the diary is to jot down "notes for a novel", a very great novel, which he plans to write as soon as he gets time. And, incidentally, he tells the story of his life.

Zigler is an idealist with undying faith in the ultimate good of things. Also, while he probably wouldn't admit it, he is superstitious. He interprets portentious significance into coincidences. He has leanings toward obscure mysticisms. With him, eternally, the wish is the father of the thought. At times he may be outwardly cynical, but (like many newspapermen) he basically is quite naive and credulous. He loses his money playing poker with professionals. He "invests" in gold mines and oil stock.

At first blush this may sound like a W. C. Fields characterization. But it must be far more subtle than that.

"Notes for a Novel" starts in Buffalo on April 18, 1906. Homer, as a young reporter, has just interviewed William Jennings Bryan and is still hypnotized by the magic of the "Great Commoner's" voice and personality. He is hurt because the Republican paper for which he works gives his interview only a stick. He makes allowance for his editor's crassness, however, because the San Francisco earthquake, occurring that morning, did require a great deal of space.

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Homer is madly in love with Mary Parsons, daughter of a small grocer. They are engaged to marry just as soon as his pay is raised to twenty dollars a week, which he is confident will come about before the year is passed.

But the flashy son of a well-to-do Main Street saloon-keeper is paying some attention to Mary, the quarrel. To teach Mary a lesson, Homer stays away from her house for a fortnight. Then he hears a rumor that Tony Schneider and Mary are engaged. He sees them together on the way home from work early one morning and, insane with jealousy, he packs up and leaves Buffalo.

Homer works a week in Cleveland and is fired. He stops in Kansas City for several years, working as reporter and copy reader, covering such stories as the "Adam God" massacre, making observations and interpretations of news events in his diary. Now and again he jots down ideas for the great novel in his diary. He feels certain in 1908 that the people in their wisdom will elect Bryan instead of Taft, who bases his campaign on "second-hand George Ade jokes about his great opponent."

In his rooming house Zigler meets Pearl Hawkins, kittenish blond somewhat older than himself. She is the daughter of the proprietor. And she traps into marriage poor Homer, not yet recovered from the spell of Mary Parsons.

As a matter of fact, Homer never recovers from Mary. He writes in his diary of the strange dreams he has of her. Unwittingly, he reveals long after his marriage that he does not love Pearl, that he feels he has betrayed Mary. Also he reveals the influence current popular novelists have on his own gestating story book. He is swayed successively by Irving Becheller, Owen Wister, John Fox Jr., Mary Johnston, Jack London, Jeffery Farnol, "David Grayson", et al, year by year.

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Life with Pearl in Kansas City is unhappy. Homer doesn't seem to be progressing in the newspaper business. So again he moves westward to San Francisco with him a sense of great freedom and the thought in the back of his mind that he never again would live with Pearl, that somehow, some time he would be reunited with Mary. But Pearl writes him she is to have a baby. So Homer sends for her.

Pearl is a self-centered woman, ignorant and narrow, even from Homer's standards. She nags him continually, but Zigler puts up with her because of the baby boy in whom he holds great hopes.

However, he still records dreams of Mary. In his dreams, he says, he sees her married to Tony Schneider, he sees her plainly about her daily household tasks. He sees them leaving Buffalo and moving to a small town in the Rocky Mountain West. He draws a conclusion that because he is working nights and sleeping days and because she is thinking of her old love while about her work his dreams are caused by telepathy.

Homer gets an offer in Denver. On the way the train is snowbound in a Utah village and from the car window the place looks strangely familiar to him. He has an odd impression that this is the town of his dreams. On the station platform he inquires of a native if a man named Tony Schneider lives there. The native answers in the affirmative and describes the house exactly, Homer solemnly records, as he has seen it in his dreams.

Zigler fights a battle with himself, pacing back and forth on the platform, knowing if he goes to see Mary he will desert his lawful wife and child, sensing that Mary and he will run away together. Finally he gives way to his temptation and stalks off through the snow toward Mary's house (as he thinks) But when the locomotive whistle blows, he turns and sprints back and climbs aboard the train.

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Homer in Denver subscribes to a weekly newspaper published in the Utah town, hoping to find mention of his beloved. But, in the course of several years, he never sees her name but once. That is her death notice. After that he ceases to dream of her.

Finally Homer becomes telegraph editor of the Denver paper. He is entranced with the job and somewhat awed, as he writes, so at having the world brought in and laid down in his lap every night.

As the years pass his life is filled with his job, petty office politics, naive analyses of the news. (For instance in 1912 Homer felt certain that Debs would be elected because of the split in the Republican party). The novel now is pushed far into the future while he devotes all his energy to the study of the background of news events which he hopes will make him a better newspaperman, hasten his promotion.

He tries desperately to save money, but whenever he works his debts into fair shape Pearl buys something expensive on the installment plan or has to take Clifford, the son, to the Coast for his health. Once in a while Homer deals himself a financial blow by getting into a poker game and losing a week's pay. Then he has to use pitiful subterfuges to keep Pearl from finding out.

Time and again he writes of being able to see light, that he will be out of debt in another month or so. Then either Pearl or Clifford gets sick and Homer has to borrow more money from the industrial bank.

Even when he is promoted to news editor and given $15 a week increase in pay he can make no headway against debt. He made the mistake of telling Pearl of his good fortune.

The Sarajevo affair is only a routine assassination to Homer for several weeks. He believes the world too civilized to engage in a major war; he believes the trouble will

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be settled even as was the *Moroccan* affair in 1910 when the nations of Europe lined up and swore at one another. But when the war finally is under way Homer is strongly pro-ally. He forgets his allegiance to Debs and favors America's entrance as soon as the Lusitania is sunk. He feels that this conflict truly is a war to end wars, a war to abolish imperialism, a war to make the world safe for democracy. Homer is past the draft age.

As the boy Clifford grows older he is a sickly, bookish boy who Homer believes is destined to become a great scientist. He makes valiant efforts to put by enough money for his technical education, but it's the same old story year by year.

All this time the proposed novel is changing. It really has been half a dozen novels. And Homer's style of writing also has changed from that of a somewhat *mysterious* and moon-struck cub reporter to *twenty* the clipped, headline style of a veteran copy editor.

Homer has a love affair with a spinster in the office, a frustrated love affair, certainly, but the woman does give him more sympathy and understanding than does Pearl, who has become a bridge hound. Homer and his pale inamorata have clandestine meetings outside the office over coffee cups and she is enthusiastic over his novel. She has ideas. So the novel changes form again.

As the diary moves into the 1930's the newspaper is sold and the new editor is a young man full of energy. The placid routine of the old order is turned into a squirrel cage over night. And Homer, dismayed, bewildered and fearful for his job, has his graying curls dyed and blossoms out in campus-out clothing. While hitherto he has fought many battles to preserve the honest, conservative characteristics of the old paper, he now fights desperately to conform with the heretical ideas of the new boss.

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Meanwhile Clifford has finished high school and while there is no money to send him back east to school, Homer believes it will do the boy good to take a couple of years arts course at the University of Denver. But Clifford has other ideas. Business, after all, is the great thing in American life. He can get a job in a filling station and break into the oil business where possibilities of success are unlimited. Also, Clifford is in love. And backed by romantic-minded Pearl, Clifford goes to work in the filling station.

Worry over Clifford, worry over Pearl, who is engaging in an affair with a neighbor, Homer fears, and worry over the disconcerting conditions at the office keep Homer from sleeping and he suffers a breakdown. He is away two weeks. And when he returns to the office the editor introduces him to his successor as news editor.

Homer is given a job reading copy at $45 a week, some $30 less than he had been making. And he is told most kindly that he must look after his health.

Greatly hurt, Homer is on the point of walking out. But he finally decides that this may be the best thing after all. Now on a routine job he can devote himself to his great novel. Certainly he has delayed too long already in starting his writing career. Now he can begin assembling his notes and actually start writing the Great American Novel. Pearl and he can live somehow on the reduced wages; Others do it. They had done it before.

His platonic girl friend is most encouraging. Homer is happier over prospects than he has been for a long time, except that his health isn't good. Lot of trouble with his stomach. For many months he has been conscious of a gnawing pain which has been growing more pronounced. Doctor says he must have an operation, but that he'll feel better than he has in years when he gets his ulcers amputated.