Naturally, there were repercussions. Bob Lieberman began teaching Literature of Cinema. His students viewed movies based on marginal novels and were encouraged to write one book critique a semester — down from the original six. Encouraged was the operative word. Not required. They weren’t even middle school book reports. The latest crop of barely literate students was evidence of the College of Northern Pennsylvania’s extreme bottom-feeding strategies.
Patricia assumed they would continue including Bob in their social activities — their dinner parties with the deans, barbecues for visiting scholars, the President’s Tea, and their annual excursion to the theater in Philadelphia. It was surreal to envision Bob and his new bride at a flute recital, sitting on one of the white linen sofas in the President’s living room, drinking beer directly from the bottle. The new President from Yale, no less. Not to mention his Wellesley wife.
“Things happen,” Patty said. It was an assertion, and she didn’t cushion it.
“Things don’t happen to a disciplined man. That’s the point. Discipline.” Malcolm stared at her.
Was that complaint on her face, he wondered, that puffing around her mouth? His wife was losing her moral resolve as she was her skin tone. There were no gradations, only a universal softening. No one was responsible. That’s the collective mantra. Everyone was damaged and inevitably must stall, collide, derail. Relapse was the consensual norm.
“People change. He wanted a family,” Patricia offered, carefully. She was controlling herself.
“He has a family,” Malcolm reminded her.
“Rachel lives in Tel Aviv. The boys are in yeshiva. Then they go in the army,” Patricia replied.
In the monolithic void of political correctness, communication is labored and deliberately vague. Spontaneity and improvisation are no longer acceptable conversational implements. Awkward silence is preferred. Between predictable statements, there’s a pause for the constant evaluation of potential areas of offense. Fear is the variable of state. We are losing our vocabulary, and our ability to differentiate, Malcolm thinks. We’re losing our sense of obvious distinctions the way we’re losing our collagen and flexibility.
“What should he do? Stitch a scarlet letter to his chest?” Patricia asked, her face a mask, her voice shrill.
“He should return his pension and resign,” Malcolm replied. “He should carry bedpans in a UN refugee camp.”
Malcolm McCarty vividly remembers Bob Lieberman in his previous incarnation. In that version, indelible as a recurring nightmare, Bob Lieberman was an impassioned artist in the midst of what would be a seven-year ordeal culminating with his second unpublished 689-page novel.
Bob’s wife, Rachel, telephoned Patricia. She was hysterical, Patricia reported. Yes, again. Apparently Bob had moved into the barn, and no longer ate or slept. He was emaciated, naked and incoherent. Rachel was threatening to leave him. Patricia insisted he intervene.
Malcolm rode his bicycle slowly to the Lieberman house and considered the metastasizing situation. This wasn’t his first rescue mission. Last year, he’d accompanied Bob to open mic readings in Scranton and Penn State. There was a winter blizzard on each occasion. Malcolm drove and Bob practiced reading his material out loud.
“I only get five minutes,” Bob explained. “But all the big-shots will be there.”
The venue proved to be a shabby basement room under a biker bar. Schedules for AA and NA support groups were tacked to the walls. LIVE AND LET LIVE and ONE DAY AT A TIME were nailed into the plaster and formed a continuous horizontal line at eye level, like a bar. The script was rendered in black block letters with curious curves suggesting South Pacific tattoos and something vaguely gothic. It was an insistent male hand and misguided, Malcolm thought, a shabby attempt to use repetition as a method to disguise a renegade nature. It was unconvincing.
The eight or nine attendees were talkative college students dressed entirely in black who looked like professional mourners. Their long fingernails were lacquered and resembled the backs of certain beetles. They chatted into gadgets and rarely glanced at the podium. Bob trembled as he read. He was inaudible.
An egg timer was set at the five-minute mark. Bob was startled and confused when it rang. He’d only read two pages, badly and much too fast. He glared at the bell like it was a guillotine.
There was punch in plastic cups and a paper plate of stale crackers. The bigshot, an undergrad in a black hoody who’d published an underground journal called Scranton Scribes, said, “Terrific words, man.”
Bob executed an abstract bow and hunched further into himself. He leaned close to Malcolm and whispered, “I need my eyeglasses next time.”
On the way back, the highway was almost impassable. There was only the black of the ice covering the road and the deeper black of the dark.
“Writing is a criminal act. Artists employ the methods of professional criminals. We have the same repertoire.” Bob began. He was earnest and attempting to be reasonable. “We trespass, break and enter, burglarize and rob. We assume aliases and engage in fraud. We lie, omit and impersonate. We collect family history for the purpose of unmasking them. The only reason we talk to anyone is to practice dialogue. Tell me that’s not true,” he looked at Malcolm.
“Autobiography is traditional,” Malcolm observed.
“We call these entities composite characters. Bull shit. We’re arsonists and assassins. We lure and trap. We’re mercenaries. We violate and desecrate. We autopsy the living, and exhume the dead for interrogation. Then we deny everything,” Bob concluded.
“Original and well-stated,” Malcolm managed. This was not the first time Bob Lieberman had articulated his theory of the artist as outlaw. Malcolm was gripping the steering wheel and he couldn’t see the painted lanes on the highway.
“Artists invented home invasions,” Bob posited. “We’ve been doing it for millennia. Some confections demand intrigue and a clarity possible only by obsession. To master the page is to know origami. We are the shifting tectonic plates. We are the calamitous disruption that causes seismic ruptures.”
Bob Lieberman tended to speak sporadically. When he broke the surface, like a diseased whale about to beach himself, his words came in a rush, energetic, wind-charged and inflamed. He favored improvisational epiphanies and driving loosened him up. It was unfortunate. Bob’s literary theories were painful. But his rhapsodic descriptions of the creative process were tortuous.
“A poem is like a one-night stand, unexpected and exotic. It happens in Katmandu or Vienna, or on a train or ship. Objects and gestures are heightened and indelible as they happen. Exaggerations demand and receive permanence. Are you following me?” Bob asked.
“Absolutely.” Malcolm was enthusiastic.
“A poem is neurosurgery. It’s a blood sacrifice. You amputate your limbs with a dull penknife and no anesthetic. That may bring you a single stanza. Maybe.” Bob paused, presumably to allow Malcolm to fully comprehend his concept.
Malcolm couldn’t distinguish a separation between the ground and sky. The pavement was glistening, glazed and scaly like crocodile hide.
“Anyone can write a poem,” Bob unexpectedly said, contradicting and negating himself. “I prefer the short story. It’s like a love affair that distills and sanctifies.”
Malcolm steeled himself as Bob described the russet fluttering of October dusk. Maples were citadels of light and nothing was peripheral.