Chapter 6 wrestle with sharks
Nobody took The Leader of Labor too seriously.Even Finkel and Crumb, its proprietors, two brooding brothers-in-law, the original founders, had no idea how they managed to turn a profit every year--and even they weren't proud of it.Reluctantly they hustle about the office, their fists and snarls make the dark green partition tremble, they grab strips of proofs and tear them to pieces; Throwing on the ground, scornfully slamming the phone onto the phone stand.At least, before, I drew the above conclusions from their behavior.Neither of them had thought of The Leader of Labor as a life's work, and they seemed to hate it.
You can't blame them: this thing is like a devil.In form, it was a thick bi-weekly tabloid, poorly printed, with pages that easily slipped from your hands and were difficult to put back in order; "Newspaper", but its real position is that it is a trade journal for union leaders. Anyway, the leaders pay for subscriptions from union funds. They must be inclined to tolerate it rather than really wanting or needing it. any iota of support from them.Needless to say, the Labor Leader's "labour-perspective" coverage of national events is outdated, probably messed up, and often obscured by typographical errors; It's all about what the union heads on the subscription list are doing, and often the bigger stories don't get reported because those union heads don't subscribe to it.Each issue is full of simple-minded propaganda arguing for "harmony" in the name of multiple small businesses that Finkel and Crumb can beg or bully into paying for space—a compromise that will almost certainly Hampering the development of a genuine Labor newspaper, however, seems like such a compromise, far from enough to limit the style of The Leader of Labor.
The turnover of editorial staff is very frequent.Whenever someone resigned, the Labor Leader placed an ad on Time's job page offering "salary commensurate with experience."The result was a constant throng of people on the sidewalk outside the Labor Leader's office, which had a rough street frontage just south of the garment district.The editor-in-chief, Crumb (Finkel is the publisher), would make them wait half an hour before picking up a stack of application forms, flinging his shirt cuffs, and opening the door with a serious face-I think he enjoyed this. From time to time, it is a chance to be a person who has the final say.
"Okay, take your time, take your time," he'd say, as the crowd of applicants jostles their way inside, squeezing the wooden gates that separate the offices inside. "Take it easy, gentlemen." Then he raised a hand and said, "May I ask you to be quiet?" Then he began to explain the job.When he talked about salary, he walked away with half the applicants, and most of the people who stayed were not competitive enough for anyone who was calm, tidy, and able to make a full English sentence.
We were all recruited that way.There were six or eight of us that winter, most of us making no secret of our desire to find better jobs, sitting frowning under the bleak fluorescent lights of The Leader of Labor.A few weeks after I lost my job at a metropolitan daily, I worked there until a big picture magazine rescued me the following spring, and I still work there.Others have other explanations, and like me, they spend a lot of time discussing them: what a place to gossip and embellish your own mishaps.
Leon Sobel joined the editorial staff less than a month after me, and from the moment Crumb ushered him in, we knew he was going to be different.He stood in the middle of the messy table, with the look on his face as if he was inspecting a new battlefield he was about to capture. Kram introduced us to him one by one (forgot half of the names), and Sobel was exaggerated and serious Shake hands with everyone.He was about thirty-five, older than most of us, short and solemn, with black hair that seemed to burst from his skull, a thin lip, and a pockmarked face with acne scars.His eyebrows were always moving as he spoke, and his eyes, not so much seeing as they were eager to see, never left the eyes of his listeners.
The first thing I know about him is that he's never worked in an office before: he's been a sheet metal worker all his adult life.And he came to The Leader of Labor not out of necessity, as most of us do, but, as he puts it, out of principle.In fact, he gave up a job that paid almost double the salary here to come here.
"What's the matter, don't you believe it?" he asked after telling me this.
"Um, no," I said. "only me--"
"Maybe you think I'm crazy," he said, forcing a shrewd smile.
I wanted to argue, but he wouldn't let me. "Listen, don't worry, McCabe. I've been called crazy, and it doesn't bother me. My wife says, 'Leon, you should figure it out,' and she says, 'People just don't understand that a person There is more to life than money.' She's right! She's right!"
"No," I said. "Wait for me--"
“People think you can only be one of two things: you’re a shark, or you’re just going to lay there and let the shark eat you alive—that’s the way it is in the world. And I, I’m one of those people who Get out there and fight sharks. Why? I don't know why. Is this crazy? Okay."
"Wait," I said.I try to explain that I have nothing against him fighting for social justice, if that's what he has in mind; it's just that I think The Labor Leader is probably the worst place in the world for his career.
But he shrugged, thinking I was being critical. "So what?" he said. "It's a newspaper, isn't it? Actually, I'm a writer. What good is a writer if he can't get his words published? Listen." He put one leg up on the edge of my desk —he was too short to make the gesture gracefully, but his forceful reasoning helped him do it. "Listen, McCabe. You're still a young man. I want to tell you something. Know how many books I've written?" Now his hands were outstretched for show, because sooner or later they would.Two stubby fists came up under my nose, dangled there for a moment, and then exploded into a thicket of stiff, trembling fingers—only the thumb of one hand remained bent in the palm. "Nine," he said, and his hands dropped to his thighs again, to rest there until he needed them again. "Nine. Fiction, philosophy, political theory—everything. None published. Believe me, I've been writing for a while."
"I believe," I said.
"So, finally I sat down and thought: What's the answer? I thought: My books, they're all telling the truth, and that's the trouble. The truth is a ridiculous thing, McCabe. People want to read the truth, but They only want to read the truth if it comes from someone they know the name of. Am I right? That's fine. I figured if I wanted to write these books, I'd have to make myself famous first. Any sacrifice would be worth it. There's no other way. You know, McCabe, it took me two years to write my last book?" Two fingers popped out, made the point, then retracted. "Two years, four or five hours a night, all day on weekends. You should listen to the crap I get from publishers. All the damn publishers in town. My wife cried. She said, 'But why, Leon? Why?'” At this point, his lips were set tightly against his small yellow teeth, and he punched the other palm on his thigh, then relaxed. "I told her, 'Listen, honey. You know why.'" Now he smiles at me with quiet joy. "I said, 'This book tells the truth. Here's why.'" Then, winking at me, he slid his legs off my desk, straightened up, and walked away confidently.He was wearing a dirty sweatshirt with black serge trousers dangling baggy and scuffed shiny at the rear.This is Sobel.
It took him a while to get used to the work and relax: for about the first week, all the time he wasn't talking, he was working passionately and giving it his all.He worried that not doing a good job would upset everyone but the executive editor.Like the rest of us, Sobel kept a list of the twelve or fifteen union offices in the city, and his main job was to keep in touch with them and write up the bits and pieces of news they released.As usual, there's nothing particularly exciting to write about.A typical report, together with a banner headline, has only two or three paragraphs:
or something like this.But Sobel worked on it as carefully as a sonnet, and when the manuscript was turned in, he sat biting his lip anxiously until Finney raised an index finger and said, "Sobel, come here."
So he walked over and stood there, nodding apologetically when Finney pointed out a little grammatical error. "Never end with a preposition, Sobel. You can't say, 'Give the plumbers new reasons to bargain.' You say, 'Give the plumbers new reasons to bargain.'"
Finney enjoyed the preaching.The damn thing is that, to an outsider, Sobel takes too long to understand what others intuitively know: Finny is a coward who softens when you raise your voice.This is a fragile neurotic man who, when excited, drools and runs his fingers through his greasy hair so that the fingers spread his pomade, like a trace of his personality, to everything he touches Above: his clothes, his pencil, his phone, and his typewriter keyboard.I guess the main reason he's managing editor is that the others don't want to put up with the kind of bullying that Crumb throws at him: their editorial meetings always start with Crumb yelling from behind his cubicle: "Fin Finny! Finny!" Finny jumped up like a squirrel, and hurried inside.So, you hear Klamm's cold and monotonous questioning voice, and Finny's exasperated and trembling explanations, which always end with Klamm punching him on the desk. "No, Finny. No, no, no! What's the matter with you? How do I explain it to you so you can understand? Well, well, get out, I'll do it myself." At first, you'll think, Why did Finney put up with this—nobody needs a job like this—but the answer, like the fact that there are only three bylines in the Labor Leader: one from a dull sports feature, A dull column, "Labour Today, by Julius Crumb," took up the entire editorial page, and the paper ended with a two-column framed article headed:
There’s even a fingernail-sized photo of the author in the upper left corner of the article, with his hair polished and a confident grin.The article tries to start from the labor point of view, pointing here and there to write something-for example, here is a report on the actors' union, or the backstage workers' union-but most of the time, he cuts to the point and uses two or three real people. "Have you heard of the pop diva?" he'd ask the union bosses; then he'd tell them her name, and two notes, one mischievously Listing her bust and hip measurements, a line stating simply which state she "comes from," he would conclude with: "The whole town is seething and people are flocking to it." They assert, on which the entire editorial staff unanimously agrees: The lady Tasteful." No reader would have guessed that Wes Finney's shoes needed mending, that he didn't have any free tickets, and that he never went out other than to watch a movie or squat in for a liverwurst sandwich .He wrote a column in his spare time and earned a little extra money--the amount, I heard, was fifty dollars a month.So it's a mutually agreeable deal: for a small fee, Cram absolutely enslaves his; In the wastebasket in his furnished room, whispered before bed, until he fell asleep and dreamed of a dream of total freedom.
Anyway, this is the guy who could have Sobel apologize for the grammatical problems in his news coverage, and it's so sad to watch.Of course, this cannot always be the case.One day, it's finally over.
That day, Finney called Sobel over and explained to him what it was. Sobel frowned, trying to understand.Neither of them noticed that Klamm had been standing at the door of his office listening, staring at the mouth of the wet cigar, studying it, as if it tasted terrible.His office is just a few feet away.
"Finny," he said. "You should be an English teacher and get a job in high school."
Startled, Finny tried to put the pencil behind his ear, but didn't notice that there was already one there, and two pencils fell to the floor with a loud clatter. "Well, I—" he said. "I just thought I—"
"Finny, that doesn't interest me. Pick up your pencil and listen to me. FYI. We don't expect Mr. Sobel to be a literate Englishman, he's an educated American, and for that, I Absolutely. Have I made it clear?"
As Sobel walked back to his desk, he had the look on his face as if he had been released from prison.
Since then, he's let loose; or almost since -- and it's O'Leary's hat that's stuck in place with the shift.
O'Leary, a recent grad from City University and one of the best men on the editorial staff (he's done well since; you can often see his bylines in some evening paper now), had that winter He was wearing a hat, one of those tarpaulins you'd find in raincoat shops.There was nothing particularly fashionable about the hat—in fact, it was floppy and sagging, making O'Leary's face look smaller in it—but Sobel must have envied the hat in his heart, seeing it as a symbol of his journalistic status. , or a symbol of uninhibitedness, because one morning, he came to work wearing the exact same hat, only brand new.But it was worse on him than on Ollie, especially with that clumsy coat he was wearing.But he seems to like the hat, and he's slowly developed a new style of doing things to go with it: Every morning, when he sits down to make a routine phone call ("I'm Leon Sawyer from Leader of Labor," Bell…”), he flicked his index finger to tilt his hat back; when he had an interview assignment to go out, he pulled it forward smartly; when he returned to the office to write his report, He tossed the hat and let it spin on the coat hook.At the end of the day, at the end of the day, when he threw the final draft into Finney's file basket, his hat slanted over one eyebrow, he swung his coat around his shoulders, waved goodbye seemingly casually, and strode off out.At that time, I always had a picture of him in my mind: he took the subway all the way back, studying his own shadow on the dark subway window.
It seemed he set out to love the job.He even brought pictures of his family—a weary, poor woman with two children—which he taped to the table with scotch tape.And the rest of us, except a box of matches, never leave any personal belongings in the office overnight.
One afternoon in late February, Finney called me to his greasy desk. "McCabe," he said. "Would you like to write a column for us?"
"What kind of column?"
"Labor gossip," he said. "Frank trade union column, from the point of view of gossip or schmoozing—little humor, characters, that sort of thing. Mr. Crumb thinks we need a column like this, and I told him you'd be the right guy for it."
I won't deny that I'm a little lighthearted (after all, we're all limited by our circumstances), but I'm also a little skeptical. "Can I sign it?"
He started blinking nervously. "Oh no, no byline," he said. "Mr. Crumb doesn't want this to be a byline. Look, these guys are going to give you all the information they've got, and you just collect it and organize it. It's just something you do during office hours, it's your day-to-day Part of the job. See what I mean?"
I see what he means. "And part of my daily salary," I said. "right?"
"That's right."
"No, thanks," I told him, and then, feeling generous, I suggested that he try O'Leary.
"No, I already asked him," Finney said. "He doesn't want to do it either. Nobody wants to do it."
Of course, I should have guessed, he went through the list and asked everyone in the office.Judging by the close of get off work at this point, I concluded that I was near the end of the list.
Sobel was right behind me as we left the office after get off work that night.He wore his overcoat like a cape, the sleeves dangling empty, his hand on his cloth cap as he deftly dodged a puddle of sewage on the sidewalk. "I'll tell you a secret, McCabe," he said. "I'm going to write a column for the newspaper. It's settled."
"Really?" I said. "Are you rich?"
"Money?" He blinked. "I want to talk to you about that. Let's go get a coffee." He ushers me into the tiled, steamy, bright automated fast food place, and we sit down at a wet corner table, He explained the ins and outs of things. "Finny said there is no money, understand? So, I said okay. He said he can't sign it, so I said okay." He blinked again. "Do things smarter."
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean?" He keeps repeating your question like this, playing with it, black eyebrows raised high, and making you wait for an answer. "Look, I see through this Finney. He can't make decisions about these things. You think he can decide what's going on here? You'd better be smart, McCabe. Mr. Crumb says it all. Crumb Sir is a smart man, don't lie to yourself." He nodded and raised his coffee cup, but his lips were burned back, he pursed his mouth, blew on the heat, and began to sip his coffee cautiously and impatiently.
"Well," I said, "well, but before you do anything, I'll check with Klamm."
"Verification?" He put the cup heavily on the table. "Verify what? Look, Mr. Crumb wants to do a column, don't you? You think he cares if I get my name? Or if I get a little extra money--you think if my column is good, he'll be stingy for me A little raise? Then you're wishful thinking. Finney is an example, don't you understand? He's worried about losing his column, so he won't take advantage of me. Understand? So, ok. I won't anyone Go find it, and I'll write that column." He poked his stiff thumb into his chest. "Using my own free time. Then I'll take it to Mr. Crumb and we'll talk serious. Leave me alone." He sat comfortably, arms resting on the table, hands cupped Cups, steaming, just no coffee.
"That's good," I said. "I hope you're right. If only that would work."
"Ah, maybe not." He took a step back, his mouth twisted into a thoughtful look, and his head turned to one side. "You know, it's a gamble." But he only said it out of politeness, to assuage my jealousy.He can show doubts because he doesn't have doubts at all, and I can see that he has already figured out how to tell his wife about it.
The next morning, Finney walked around each of our desks, instructing us to provide Sobel with any gossip we could find; the column was scheduled for the next installment.Later I saw him conferring with Sobel, briefly telling him how the column should be written, and I realized it was all Finney talking, and Sobel was just sitting there puffing contemptuous puffs.
This issue just went to press, so there are still two weeks until the column is due.At first, there wasn't much news—it was hard to get any news from the unions we covered, let alone "chitchat."Whenever someone passed him a note, Sobel frowned; or scribbled something, or threw it in a desk drawer; Throw it in the wastebasket.All I remember was one of the ones I gave him: The representative of the local steam pipe fitters union I was in charge of yelled at me through the closed door to leave him alone that day because his wife had just had twins.But Sobel didn't want the news. "This guy had twins," he said. "So what?"
"As you please," I said. "Do you have a lot of other materials on hand?"
He shrugged. "One thing, I'm not in a hurry. But, let me tell you something—I'm not going to use much of this crap. This kind of gossip. Who the hell reads this stuff? You can't fill a whole column with this Kind of crap. You have to use something to hold it together. Am I right?"
Another time (now that all he talks about is the column), he says with a grin: "My wife says I'm as bad now as I used to be writing books. Write, write, write. But she doesn't care," he added road. "She's really excited about it. She talks about everybody—the neighbors, everyone. Her brother comes over on Sundays and asks me how my job is—you know, in a smug way. I No word, but my wife yelled out, 'Leon's doing a column for the paper'--she told him everything. Man, you should see his face."
Every morning, he brought in the work he had done the night before, took a stack of handwritten manuscripts, typed it out during lunch, and sat at his desk chewing a sandwich while revising.Every night, he was the last one to come home; when we left, he was still rapt and absorbed in typing on his typewriter.Finney kept bugging him—"Sobel, how did that close-up go?"—but he kept squinting his eyes and lifting his jaw ferociously, avoiding the question. "What are you in a hurry for? I'll give it to you." After speaking, he winked at me.
On the morning of the submission day, when he came to work, there was still a small piece of toilet paper stuck to his face; he scratched his face when he was nervous when shaving.In other respects, though, he looked as confident as ever.Nobody called that morning—we were all transcribing and proofreading on deadline day—so the first thing he did was spread out the final draft and read it one last time.He was so focused that he didn't realize that Finny was standing next to him. "Would you like to write that to me, Sobel?"
Sobel snatched up the manuscripts, covering them haughtily with his forearms.He looked at Finny intently, and said so firmly that he must have been practicing for the past two weeks: "I'm going to show this to Mr. Crumb. Not to you."
Finny was furious, his face twisted into a ball. "No, no, Mr. Crumb doesn't need to see this," he said. "Besides, he's not here yet. Come, give it to me."
"You're wasting your time, Finney," said Sobel. "I'm waiting for Mr. Crumb."
Finney muttered, avoiding Sobel's smug gaze, returned to his desk, and read "Broadway Straight" for proofreading.
That morning I was busy with my work at the typesetting table, posting proofs to the first block.As I stood there, wrestling with unmanageable page layouts and glue-covered scissors, Sobel stalked behind me, looking agitated. "McCabe, before I turn it in," he asked. "Would you like to see it?" He handed me the stack of manuscripts.
My first shock was a picture posted on the front page, a small picture of him in that hat.Followed by his headline:
I can't remember exactly the words of the first paragraph, but the general idea is as follows:
I looked up to find him uncovering the razor cut on his face, blood now oozing freely. "Well," I said, "first of all, I'm not going to give him a manuscript with a picture like yours on it—I mean, don't you think it's better to let him see it before—"
"Okay," he said, dabbing his face with a balled-up handkerchief. "Okay, I'll remove the picture. Go on, read the rest."
But there is no time to read any more.Cram came, Finney told him, and now he was standing in the doorway of his office, chewing loudly on a dead cigar. "Sobel, you want to see me?" he called.
"Wait a minute," Sobel said.He tidied up the pages of "The Sobel Chat," tore off the photographs, stuffed them in his back pocket, and headed for the door.On the way he thought of taking off his hat and throwing it on the coat hook, but missed.Then, after he disappeared into the cubicle, we all sat and listened.
Before long, Klamm started having seizures. "No, Sobel. No, no, no! What is this? Are you trying to trick me?"
Outside, Finny backed away comically, slapped the side of the head, and giggled, and O'Leary had to stare at him until he stopped laughing.
We hear Sobel's voice, a sentence or two of mumbled excuses, and then Crumb breaks out again: "'The Mystery of Human Nature'—Is this nonsense? Is this trivial? You can't follow instructions? Wait— Finny! Finny!"
Finney trotted to the door, glad to be called, and we heard him answer Crumb's inquiry clearly and rightly: yes, he had told Sobel what the column should look like; yes, he had Make it clear that no bylines are allowed; and yes, Sobel has been given a wealth of gossip.Sobel's words we heard were vague, in a terse and flat tone.Hearing Klamm's gruff answer, even if we couldn't make out the words, we knew it was over.Then they came out, Finny with the goofy grin you sometimes see in people gaping at street accidents, and Sobel dead-faced.
He picked up his hat from the floor, took his coat off the hook, put it on, and came up to me. "Goodbye, McCabe," he said. "Take care of yourself."
I shook his hand, felt a Finny smirk on my face, and asked a stupid question. "Are you leaving?"
He nodded.He then shook O'Leary's hand—"Goodbye, boy"—and then, hesitantly, was unsure whether to shake hands with other colleagues.He barely shook his index finger and walked to the street.
Finny couldn't wait to tell us what happened inside, and whispered eagerly, "That guy's crazy! He said to Crumb, 'Either you take this column or I quit'—that's what it said. Tom just looked at him and said, 'Resign? Get the hell out of here, you're fired.' I mean, what else could he have said?"
Turning around, I saw pictures of Sobel's wife and children still posted on his desk.I tore it off and ran down the street with it. "Hey, Sobel!" I called.He walked a block away, was already a small figure, and walked towards the subway station.I started chasing him and almost broke my neck in the frozen mud. "Hey, Sobel!" But he didn't hear it.
Back at the office, I found his address in the Bronx phone book, put the photo in an envelope, dropped it in the mailbox, and I hoped the story would end there.
But that afternoon I called the editor-in-chief of the hardware trade journal I worked for before the war, and he said he had no vacancies right now, but there might be one soon, and he was willing to interview if Sobel wanted to stop by .What a stupid idea: the pay there is even lower than that offered by The Leader of Labor, and, besides, it's a place for young people whose father wants them to learn a bit of the hardware business—a word from Sobel who might not be at all. Will not consider him.But it was better than nothing, so that night, as soon as I left the office, I found a phone booth and looked up the number of Sobel's house again.
There was a woman's voice on the other end of the phone, but it wasn't the thin, weak voice I had imagined.It's muffled and melodious - that was my first surprise.
"Is that Mrs. Sobel?" I asked, giggling into the microphone. "Is Leon home?"
She started, "Wait a minute," but then said, "Who are you, please? I don't want to bother him right now."
I told her my name and tried to explain the hardware trade journal thing.
"I don't understand," she said. "What kind of newspaper is this?"
"Well, it's a trade journal," I said. "Not very much, I suppose, but it's—you know, sort of good for a journal of its kind."
"I see," she said. "You want him to apply for a job there? Is that so?"
"Well, I mean, if he wants to, of course," I said.I started to sweat.It's hard to connect the pale, sickly face in Sobel's photo with this quiet, almost graceful voice. "I just thought he could give it a try, that's all."
"Oh," she said, "wait a minute, I'll ask him." She put the phone down, and I heard them talking quietly in the back.Their words were a bit vague at first, but then I heard Sobel say, "Ah, I'm going to tell him—I just thanked him for calling." And I heard her reply, absolutely tender, "No, Honey, why should you thank him? He doesn't deserve it."
"McCabe is okay," he said.
"No, he's not," she told him, "or he should save your face by not bothering you. Let me do it. Please, I'll get rid of him."
She went back to the phone and she said, "No, my husband said he wasn't interested in that kind of work." Then she politely thanked me, said goodbye, and let me walk out of the phone booth feeling more and more weak and sweating .
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