Chapter 2 The first revenge

Massin straightened the curved pin slowly and carefully with his long, strong fingers. "Hold on to his head, Jack," he said to the man standing behind Halstead, "please hold on to his head." Halsted knew what Marcin was up to, and began to scream, and Jack Langley's big hand clutched his head, holding it still.Screams echoed through the abandoned warehouse.The large space becomes a natural megaphone.Halstead sounds like a singing actor practicing his voice the night before a premiere.I am back. —George Stark: The Massin Way Chapter 1 Leaks one The "Volkswagen" magazine on May 23 is very representative.

The cover featured a photo of the rock star who hanged himself in his cell this week while in prison for possession of cocaine and various narcotics.Inside the magazine was the usual stuff: Nine unsolved sex murders in Nebudaska's desolate western half; a pumpkin—that is, it looks like a half-closed eye in a dim room; a crippled, half-paralyzed girl learns ballroom dancing; a Hollywood divorce; a New York society marriage ; a wrestler recovering from a heart attack; a comedian fighting a money lawsuit. There was also a story about a Utah entrepreneur promoting a new toy called "Your Mom!" which looked like a "cute (?) mother-in-law."She has a tape recorder in it and can say things like: "Honey, he grew up and my food was never cold at my house," or "When I came to live with your brother for a few weeks, they never gave me a hard look." if.The funniest thing is, if you want this toy to talk, you don't have to pull the string on her back, just kick the damn thing hard. "'Your mother!' is stuffed with soft stuff, guaranteed not to break, and guaranteed not to scratch walls or furniture," proudly reported the inventor, Mr. Gaspard Wilmot (the report incidentally mentioned He was charged with tax evasion—a charge that was later dropped).

On page thirty-three of America's leading entertainment and intellectual magazine, the first graphic is typical Mass: punchy, laconic, and acerbic.It read: Biography. "Popular magazine likes to cut to the chase," Ted told his wife, Liz, as they sat at the kitchen table reading the article a second time together. "If you don't like the biography section, then you read disaster." column, read about the murder of a girl in Nebudaska." "It's not funny when you think about it," said Liz Beaumont, and then put her hand over her mouth in a self-denying giggle.

"Not terribly funny, but certainly eccentric," Ted said, turning the page again.At the same time, his hand absently touched a small white scar on his forehead. Like most biographies in Popular, this one has more words than pictures. "Do you regret that?" Liz asked, listening to the twins next door, but they were still sound asleep so far. "First of all," Ted said, "I didn't do it, we did it. Remember, we are inseparable!" He tapped a photo on the second page of the article, in which Ted sat Beside his typewriter, with a sheet of paper still on the roller, Liz was handing him a tray of chocolate candies.What is written on the paper cannot be seen clearly.But that doesn't matter, it's all for show anyway.Writing was hard work for him, and he couldn't work while someone was watching, much less if that person was a photographer for Popular magazine.It might be easier with George, but it's very difficult with Ted Beaumont.Liz never came near him when he was writing.She wouldn't even give him a telegram, let alone a chocolate candy.

"Yes, but—" "Secondly..." He looked at the photo of them both: Liz holding the chocolate, he looking up at her.They were both grinning.This kind of smile looks weird and artificial.He thought of his time as an Appalachian Trail guide in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.At that time, he had a pet raccoon named John Wesley Harding.He didn't pay attention to domesticating John, they met by chance.On cold nights, he likes to drink a little wine, and the raccoon likes to drink too. Sometimes, when the raccoon has drunk too much, he will grin like this. "Secondly what?"

Second, the National Book candidate and his wife, grinning at each other like drunken raccoons, are funny, he thought, and couldn't help it anymore, and burst out laughing. "Ted, you're going to wake up the twins!" He tried to suppress his laughter, but failed. "Secondly, we look like a couple of fools, and I don't give a damn," he said, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her neck. In another room, William and Wendy began to cry. Liz looked at him, wanting to reproach him, but couldn't.It was great to hear him laugh.Maybe it's because he rarely smiles.His laughter had a strange and strange power over her.Ted Beaumont was not one to laugh.

"It's my fault," he said, "I'm going to look after them." He started to stand up, but bumped into the table, nearly knocking it over.He is a very gentle man, but surprisingly clumsy.In that regard, he was still a boy. The vase in the middle of the table slid towards the edge of the table, but thanks to Liz's sharp eyes and quick eyes, she grabbed it and didn't fall to the ground and shatter. "You are! Ted!" she said, but then she too began to laugh. He sat down for another moment.He didn't take her hand, but stroked it gently with both hands: "Listen, baby, do you care?"

"Don't care," she said.For a moment, she wanted to say: But, it disturbs me.Not because we look ridiculous, but because... oh, I don't know why.I'm just a little uneasy. She thought so, but didn't say it.It was great to hear him laugh.She took one of her hands and squeezed it tightly. "No," she said, "I don't care. I think it's funny. You've finally decided to get to the bottom of the damn thing. If the publicity is good for the release of The Golden Dog, all the better." She stood up, pressed his shoulders to let him sit down, and didn't let him go with her.

"You'll take care of them next time," she said, "I want you to sit here until the subconscious urge to guide you to destroy my vase fades away." "Well," he said, smiling, "I love you, Liz." "I love you too." She went off to babysit the twins, and Ted Beaumont went back to his biography. Unlike most articles in Popular, Ted Beaumont's biography does not begin with a full-length photo, but with a photo of less than a quarter of a page.It stands out because it's uniquely designed, with Ted and Liz in a cemetery, dressed in black.The following line is very eye-catching, forming a cruel contrast.

In the photo, Ted is holding a shovel and Liz is holding a hoe.Next to it is a cart with various cemetery tools on it.There are several bouquets of flowers on the grave, and the words on the tombstone are clearly visible. george stark 1975-1988 not a very cute guy In stark contrast to this place and behavior, two false sextons shake hands on a new grave—and laugh happily. Of course, this is done on purpose.There are many photos accompanying the article: the one of the buried body, the one of the chocolate candy, one of Ted walking alone on a forest path, all of which are deliberately made for people to see.It's funny.For five years Liz had been buying Popular at the supermarket, and they both laughed at it, but they all took turns looking at it before dinner and sometimes in the toilet if they didn't have any other good books on hand .Ted often wonders if the magazine's success is due to its interest in celebrity trivia, which makes it so interesting, or its editorial style: large black-and-white photographs, articles composed of simple manifesto sentences?However, he never thought of this, these photos were all artificially directed.

The photographer was a woman named Phyllis Myers.She told Ted and Liz that she had taken many photos of teddy bears lying in coffins, all dressed in children's clothes.She hopes to compile these photos into a book and sell it to a publishing house in New York.It wasn't until the second day of photoshoots and interviews that Ted found out that the woman was testing him to see if he would write a commentary for her album."Death and Teddy Bears," she said, would be "the final, most perfect commentary on the American way of dying, don't you think so, Ted?" Ted thought she had a horrible penchant, and in that light it was no surprise that Myers had ordered a tombstone for George Stark and brought it over from New York.Tombstones are made of papier mache. "Would you like to shake hands in front of me?" she asked with a smile that was half-flattering and conceited. "This is a great picture." Liz glanced at Ted in horror, and then they both looked at the fake tombstone transported from afar, their eyes were very complicated: surprise, confusion, disbelief.Ted's eyes kept falling repeatedly on the epitaph: not a very cute guy In fact, the story that "Volkswagen" wants to tell the vast number of American celebrity admirers is very simple.Ted Beaumont is a well-respected author whose first novel, The Wild Dancers, was nominated for the 1970 National Book Award.Such things matter to literary critics, but America's broad celebrity-worship has little interest in Ted Beaumont, who has published only one book under his own name since then.Celebrity wannabes care about someone else, someone who doesn't exist at all.Ted has written a best-selling novel under another name, as well as three highly successful sequels.The name he used was, of course, George Stark. Ted's agent, Rick Cowley, revealed the George Stark secret to Publishers Weekly's Louis Booker with his own consent.Jerry Harkawi of the Publishing Society then spread the news further.But neither Harkawi nor Booker knew the whole story, because Ted forbade them to mention that pompous bastard, Frederick Clausen.Publishing associations and publishing trade weeklies had limited reach, so the secret was deemed worthy of wider dissemination.Ted tells Liz and Rick that Clausen is the bastard who forced them to reveal the secret, and not to mention him in the report. In the first step interview, Jerry asked him what he thought George Stark was like. "George," Ted replied, "isn't a very cute guy." That line became the title of Jerry's article, and it inspired a photographer named Myers to actually order one. Make a fake tombstone and engrave this sentence on it.Incredible world.Incredible, incredible world. Suddenly, Tad burst into laughter again. two Below the photo of Ted and Liz in the cemetery, there are two lines printed on a black background. Line 1: The deceased was extremely intimate with the two persons. Second line: So why are they laughing? "Because the world is a strange ghost place." Ted Beaumont smiled while covering his mouth. Liz Beaumont wasn't the only one upset by the sudden publicity.He himself felt a little uneasy.Even so, he found it impossible to stop laughing.He paused for a moment, and as soon as his eyes caught the inscription - not a very cute fellow - he couldn't help laughing again.Trying to stop laughing is like trying to plug a dam full of holes. You plug one hole and immediately find a new hole elsewhere. Thad suspected that there was something wrong with the uncontrollable laughter—it was hysteria.He knows this vent has nothing to do with humor.In fact, the reasons for this are often not very interesting. Maybe, it's because of fear of something. Are you afraid of a damn article in Popular Magazine?Is that what you think?madness.Afraid that your colleagues in the English department will see those photos and think you have lost your mind? No.He had no fear of his colleagues, not even the oldest among them.He could be a professional writer if he wanted to, and it was consoling that he had enough money to guarantee it.Of course, he doesn't want to do that at the moment, because while he dislikes the bureaucracy and routine of university life, he loves teaching.A few years ago, he cared a lot about what his colleagues thought of him, but not anymore.True, he cared a lot about what their friends thought, his friends, Liz's friends, and their mutual friends, some of whom happened to be his colleagues, but he didn't think those people would take it too seriously serious. If there's anything to be afraid of, it's— Stop here.He ordered himself in a cold, stern tone in his heart.This kind of tone once scared the naughtiest student in his class to turn pale and dare not speak.Stop this cranky thinking now. He looked down at the picture again, but this time he didn't look at his wife's face or his own, which looked at each other and smiled like two writers. george stark 1975-1988 not a very cute guy That was what disturbed him. that tombstone.that name.those dates.Most of all, the sour epitaph, which made him laugh out loud, but, for some reason, there was nothing funny underneath it. that name. That epitaph. "It's okay," Ted whispered, "he's fucking dead now." However, he still feels uneasy. When Liz came back with the newly dressed twins in each arm, Ted looked down and read the article again. "Did I murder him?" Ted Beaumont asked repeatedly, lost in thought.He was once considered the most promising novelist in the United States, and his novel "The Dancers" was nominated for the 1972 National Book Award.He looked a little confused. "Murder," he whispered once, as if the word had never occurred to him ... although George Stark wrote almost exclusively of murder, and Beaumont called him his "dark other half." He reached out from a wide-mouthed ceramic jug next to his honest typewriter, pulled out a Black Beauty Belloine pencil (which, Beaumont said, Stark used to write), and began nibbling on it.Judging from the appearance of a dozen pencils in the bottle, biting pencils is a habit of his. "No," he said at last, throwing the pencil back into the bottle, "I didn't murder him." He looked up, smiling.Beaumont was thirty-nine, and when he smiled so broadly, he looked like a college student. "George died of natural causes." Beaumont said George Stark was his wife's idea.Elizabeth Stephens Beaumont was a quiet, lovely fair-haired woman who did not think she alone deserved the credit. "What I did," she said, "was to suggest that he write another novel under another name and see what came of it. Ted had hit a writing block and needed a new breakthrough. And actually" —she laughed—"George Stark was there long ago. I saw signs of him in some of the unfinished drafts Tad wrote on and off. It was just bringing him out of the shadows." .” Many of Beaumont's colleagues believed that his problems were not merely a writer's block.At least two prominent authors (who asked not to be named) said they worried about Beaumont's sanity during the difficult period between his first and second books.One writer, who said that "The Wild Dancers" received more criticism than praise after its publication, believed that Beaumont had attempted suicide. Asked if he had considered suicide, Beaumont simply shook his head and said, "That's a stupid idea. The real problem isn't acceptance, it's a writing block. A dead writer never gets over that block." .” At the same time, Liz Beaumont was constantly "lobbiing" - Beaumont's word for it - under a pseudonym. "She said if I wanted to, I could pick myself up again. Write whatever I wanted to, don't care what The New York Times Book Review might say. She said I could write one, two novels, one detective story, one not. Science fiction. Or, I could write a crime novel." Ted Beaumont grinned. "I think she put that one last on purpose. She knew I'd always wanted to write a crime novel and just never had the chance." "Writing under a pseudonym, that's a huge attraction to me. It's liberating, like a secret emergency exit, if you know what I mean." "But there are other factors as well. It's hard to tell." Beaumont reached for the well-sharpened Belloine pencil in the bottle, then withdrew it.He looked out the window of his study, and there were green trees in spring. “Writing under a pseudonym is like becoming an invisible person,” he stammers at last. “The more I think about the idea, the more I feel like I’m going to… oh… reinvent myself.” His hand quietly reached for the ceramic bottle, and this time he successfully pulled out a pencil. At the same time, his mind was thinking about other things. Ted turned the page, then looked up at the twins in the double high chair.Boy-girl twins are not usually alike, but Wendy and William are strikingly alike. William grinned at Tad. Wendy was grinning at him too, but she was showing off an addition her brother didn't have - a solitary front tooth that didn't hurt at all when it came in, and it burrowed through the gums effortlessly, like diving Like the telescope of the boat drilled out of the sea. Wendy removed a chubby little hand from the plastic bottle.Open your little hands, revealing pink palms, close them, and open them.A Wendy wave. Without looking at her, William removed one of his hands from the bottle, opened it, closed it, opened it.A William wave. Tad raised a hand solemnly from the table, opened it, closed it, opened it. The twins grinned. He looked down at the magazine again.Ah, The Mass, he thought--we would be there without you, what would we do?This is the age of stardom in America. Of course, the author shakes all the secrets out, especially the hard four years since The Dancers didn't win a book award, but that's to be expected, and he doesn't find the revelations embarrassing.One was that it was not shameful, and the other was that he had always found truth easier to accept than lies.At least in the long run. Of course, this raises another question: Do Popular magazine and Changyuan have anything in common? Oh, it's too late now. The guy who wrote the story was called Mike—Mike what?Can't remember. The author's byline in The Popular is usually at the end of the article, unless you're an earl who spills royal secrets and a movie star who chews on other movie stars.Ted had to turn four pages (two of which were full-page ads) to find the name—McDonaldson.He chatted late into the night with Mike, and when Ted asked him if anyone really cared that he had written a few books under another name, Donaldson's answer made Ted laugh. "Statistics show that most of the readers of The Popular are dull. That makes it hard for them to discover anything new, so they read what others find. They'll be very curious to know all about your friend George." "He's not my friend," Ted replied with a smile. Now, he asked Liz at the stove, "Are you done, baby? Want me to help?" "No," she said, "I'm just making some soup for the kids. Haven't you finished admiring yourself?" "Not yet," Thad said cheekily, returning to the story. "The hardest part is actually the name," continued Beaumont, biting his pencil lightly, "but it's very important. I know it's going to make a difference. I know it's going to break my writing block . . . if I have an identity, an identity that is different from me but appropriate." How did he choose George Stark? "Well, there was a crime novelist named Donald E. Wiselake," Beaumont explained, "and Wiselake wrote crime novels under his real name, which were social comedies about American life and American morality. .” "However, from the early sixties to the mid-seventies, he wrote a series of novels under the name Richard Stark, and those books were very different. They were all about a career named Parker A thief. He has no past, no future, and nothing but stealing." "For some reason, Wiselake ended up writing about Parker, but I'll never forget what Wiselake said after the pseudonym became public. He said he wrote on sunny days and Stark on cloudy days. I I like this very much, because 1973 to 1975 happened to be my cloudy day. "In the best novels, Parker is not so much a human being as a killing machine. Robbers being robbed is a running theme. Parker encounters a lot of villains -- I mean, other villains -- — Exactly like a robot whose program has only one goal. 'I want my money' he said, that's all he said. 'I want my money, I want my money.' Which reminds you of who Yet?" The interviewer nods.Beaumont is describing Alex Massin, the main character in George Stark's novel. “If the whole book of ‘Masin’s Way’ was as written as it was at the beginning, I’d put it in a drawer forever,” says Beaumont, and everything flows very smoothly at his own pace. " The interviewer asked if Beaumont meant that after he had been writing for a while, George Stark woke up and started talking. "Yes," said Beaumont, "almost." Tad looked up and couldn't help laughing again.The twins grinned when he saw him laugh, and Liz was feeding them pea soup.He said, what he actually said was: "My God! That's so dramatic! You're talking about it like a chapter in Frankenstein: Lightning finally hits the top pole of the castle, and the monster is killed." Hit alive!" "I can't finish feeding them if you don't stop," Liz said.There was a boiled pea on the tip of her nose, and Tad had a ridiculous urge to kiss it off. "Stop what?" "You grin and they grin. You can't feed a grinning baby, Ted." "I'm sorry," Ted said humbly, winking at the twins.The two identical smiling faces were covered with green peas, and they laughed even more happily. He lowered his head and continued to read. "One night in 1975, I thought of the name and started writing 'Masin's Way', but, one more thing. When I was ready, I rolled a piece of paper into the typewriter...then I pulled it out again Come on. I always write on a typewriter, but George Stark apparently doesn't like typewriters." Another grin. "Maybe there was no typewriter at all where he was serving his sentence." Beaumont was referring to George Stark's "author bio," which said the author was thirty-nine years old and had served time in three different prisons for arson, knife threat and attempted murder pleas.But this biography is only part of the story; Beaumont also wrote an authorship biography for Darwin, in which he details the history of his alter ego with the imagination of a good novelist.Everything from his birth in Manchester, New Hampshire, to his final settlement in Oxford, Mississippi, except that George Stark was buried six weeks earlier in his hometown cemetery in Maine. "I found an old notebook in a desk drawer, and I use those pencils." He pointed to the ceramic jar of pencils, and seemed a little surprised to find himself holding one in his hand. "I started writing, The next thing I knew, Liz told me it was midnight and asked me if I wanted to sleep." Liz Beaumont remembered that night too."I woke up at 11.45 and he wasn't in bed and I thought, oh, he's writing? But I didn't hear the typewriter and I was a little scared," she said. The look on her face showed that she was more than a little scared. "I went downstairs and saw him scribbling in that notebook, and you could have knocked me down with a feather," she laughed. "His nose was almost stuck to the paper." The interviewer asked her if she was relieved. Liz Beaumont said in a soft, quiet tone, "I am greatly relieved." "I counted my notebook and found that I had written sixteen pages without changing a word," said Beaumont. "I got a new pencil down to a quarter." He looked at the bottle, his face The expression is both sad and humorous. "Now that George is dead, I think I should throw these pencils away. I don't use them myself. I try, but it doesn't work. I can't live without my typewriter. My hands get tired and clumsy. "George was never like that." He raised his head, blinking mysteriously. "Honey," he said, looking up at his wife, who was trying to get the last bit of pea soup into William's mouth.The child's bib appeared to be covered in soup. "What for?" "Look here." She complied. Ted blinked. "Is this mysterious?" "No, honey." "I don't think so either." The rest of the story is ironic. "Marcin's Way" was published in June 1976 by a small Darwin press (Baumont's "True The book by my real "self" was published by Dutton Publishers) and was a surprise success, becoming a #1 national bestseller in the United States. It was also made into a smashing movie. "For a long time, I waited for someone to find out that I was George, and George was me," Beaumont said. "The copyright was registered in the name of George Stark, but my agent knew that his wife— - Now she's his ex-wife, but still a partner - and Darwin's executives and treasurer know. He must know, because George can write some novels in normal calligraphy, but has trouble signing checks ...of course the IRS had to know too. So Liz and I waited for a year and a half for someone to debunk this trick. It didn't happen. I think it was pure luck, which proves that when you think it must be When someone would spill a secret, they kept it tight." This secret has been kept for a long time, and the much more prolific writer has published three novels.None were as spectacularly successful as "Macin's Way," but they all made bestseller lists and garnered attention. After a long period of contemplation, Beaumont began to talk about why he finally decided to end the game. "You have to remember that George Stark existed only on paper after all. I liked him for a long time...and, besides, the guy made a lot of money. I call it my friend—money itself. If I If I wanted to, I could leave college and still be able to pay my loans, and just thinking about it gave me a huge sense of freedom. "But, I want to write my own book again, and Stark has nothing to say. It's as simple as that. I know, Liz knows, my agent knows... I think even Darwin's George's The editor knows it too. But if I keep this a secret, I will have a hard time resisting the temptation to write another George Stark novel. Like everyone, I am easily tempted by money. The solution is once and for all Kill him. "In other words, take the secret out. That's what I've done. In fact, that's what I'm doing now." Thad looked up and smiled.Suddenly, his astonishment at the contrived photographs in VW was itself a little phony, a little contrived.It's not uncommon for magazine photographers to sometimes tailor scenes to suit readers' expectations.He thinks most interviews are like that too, just to a different degree.He guessed he handled it a little better than the others; he was a novelist after all... a novelist is just a paid liar.The bigger the lie, the more money you get. Stark had nothing to say.It's as simple as that. How concise and clear. How convincing. Pure nonsense. "baby?" "what?" She was wiping Wendy's face.Wendy didn't like the idea.She kept turning her little face back and forth, yelling angrily, and Liz chased after her with a towel.Tad figured his wife would catch her eventually, though he thought there was a chance she'd get tired of it first.It seemed that Wendy was also aware of this possibility. Isn't it wrong that we lied about Clausen's role in the whole thing? " "We didn't lie, Ted. We just didn't mention his name." "He's a nasty guy, isn't he?" "No," Liz said quietly.She now began to wipe William's face. "He's a mean little reptile." Ted snorted. "A reptile?" "Yes. A reptile." "This is the first time I've heard that statement." "I went to the video store around the corner to make a tape last week and I saw a horror movie called Reptiles. I thought, great. Someone made a movie about Frederick Clausen and his ilk .I'm going to tell Ted. But I'm just remembering now." "So you think we're doing the right thing?" "Exactly," she said.Holding the towel in her hand, she pointed to Ted first, and then pointed to the magazines spread out on the table, "Ted, you get what you deserve from it, and the public gets what they deserve. Frederick Clausen gets shit... and that's exactly what he deserves." "Thank you," he said. She shrugged. "You're overly sensitive sometimes, Ted." "Is this the trouble?" "Yes—all the trouble...William, my God! Tad, if you'd give me a hand—" Ted closed the magazine, picked up William, and followed Liz, who was holding Wendy, into the twins' bedroom.The fat baby was warm and joyously heavy, his eyes wide open and interested in everything, and his arms would occasionally wrap around Tad's neck.Liz puts Wendy on one changing table and Ted puts William on the other.They swapped dry diapers for wet ones, Liz a little faster than Tad. "Oh, we're in Popular, and it's all over. Right?" "Yes." She smiled.Thad thought the smile seemed unreal, but he remembered his own weird laugh and decided not to ask.Sometimes he was so insecure (a reaction to his physical clumsiness) that he was overly critical of Liz.She rarely argued with him about it, but he could see a weary look in her eyes when he was nagging too much.What she just said - you're overly sensitive sometimes, Tad. He wraps William in the diaper tightly while he rests one forearm on the happily throbbing baby's belly in case William rolls off the table and falls to his death, which the child seems determined to do. "Buckulach!" cried William. "Yes," Ted agreed. "Dewit!" Wendy yelled. Ted nodded: "This is also understandable." "It was right to let him die," said Liz suddenly. Ted looked up.He considered for a moment, then nodded.There was no need to say who he was; they both understood. "right." "I don't like him very much." So your husband is not very kind, he almost blurted out the answer.That's not surprising since she wasn't talking about him.George Stark's writing style is not the only difference between them. "I don't like it either," he said. "What's for dinner?"