She sneered. “I never look at the front part of that piece of shit. I read good stuff, Rus: Harlequins, Barbara Cartland, you know.”
“I guess it was a quixotic question, Bobbie. Looks like you’re just getting in from a hard night. How about buying me a cup of coffee?”
“Sorry, I don’t buy nothing except for Smoke.”
“He’s the chap who drives the ornate Caddie, wears the big white sombrero?”
“That’s my lover-boy. I hope you don’t have no criticism.”
“Not me,” said I. “He has about him the aura of a Renaissance wit. That’s all too rare these days.”
“You want to panhandle, you go along Gramercy North. That’s where the Jewish doctors are.”
“Hey, that’s an idea.”
She frowned. “I don’t know, Rus, sometimes I think it oughta be better than this. But then I think, Where?” She shook her head as if to clear it, then sighed, took the ad from me, put it in her purse, and came out with a quarter. “Here you go.” I was genuinely touched. “Gee, Bobbie, that’s nice of you.”
“What the hell. Support the arts!” She gave me a wink and a smile and assumed a sprightly stride as she crossed the street to her hotel.
The bomb destroyed only the WC on my floor, as it happened, and the super, speaking for the absentee slumlord (frankly, I had always assumed they were the same individual), refused to install another, so long as there was a “perfectly good crapper in the cellar.”
An anonymous caller informed TV newsperson Jackie Johansen that the bombing was the work of a group which deplored the detonation of explosives on the premises of persons who had no responsibility for the supposed injustices suffered by the bombers. As there was really no other means by which to attract the notice of the press to this organization, the world should expect more of the same.
I haven’t yet got in touch with Norman Rasmussen: I started the new play but soon ran into a problem with the second act.
A Biography of Thomas Berger
Thomas Louis Berger (1924–2014) was an American novelist best known for his picaresque classic, Little Big Man (1964). His other works include Arthur Rex (1978), Neighbors (1980), and The Feud (1983), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Berger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Thomas Charles, a public school business manager, and Mildred (née Bubbe) Berger. Berger grew up in the town of Lockland, Ohio, and one of his first jobs was working at a branch of the public library while in high school. After a brief period in college, Berger enlisted in the army in 1943 and served in Europe during World War II. His experiences with a medical unit in the American occupation zone of postwar Berlin inspired his first novel, Crazy in Berlin (1958). This novel introduced protagonist Carlo Reinhart, who would appear in several more novels.
In 1946, Berger reentered college at the University of Cincinnati, earning a bachelor’s degree two years later. In 1948, he moved to New York City and was hired as librarian of the Rand School of Social Science. While enrolled in a writer's workshop at the nearby New School for Social Research, Berger met artist Jeanne Redpath; they married in 1950. He subsequently entered Columbia University as a graduate student in English literature, but left the program after a year and a half without taking a degree. He next worked at the New York Times Index; at Popular Science Monthly as an associate editor; and, for a decade, as a freelance copy editor for book publishers.
Following the success of Rinehart in Love (1962), Berger was named a Dial Fellow. In 1965, he received the Western Heritage Award and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for Little Big Man (1964), the success of which allowed him to write full time. In 1970, Little Big Man was made into an acclaimed film, directed by Arthur Penn and starring Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway.
Following his job as Esquire’s film critic from 1972 to 1973, Berger became a writer in residence at the University of Kansas in 1974. One year later, he became a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Southampton College, and went on to lecture at Yale University and the University of California, Davis.
Berger’s work continued to appear on the big screen. His novel Neighbors (1980) was adapted for a 1981 film starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. In 1984, his novel The Feud (1983) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; in 1988, it too was made into a movie. His thriller Meeting Evil (1992) was adapted as a 2012 film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Luke Wilson.
In 1999, Berger published The Return of Little Big Man, a sequel to his literary classic. His most recent novel, Adventures of the Artificial Woman, was published in 2004.
Berger lived in New York’s Hudson Valley.
In 1966, two years after he wrote Little Big Man, Berger stands at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the site of Custer’s last stand in 1876. This was Berger’s first visit to the famous battlefield.
This black-and-white image became the readers’ vision of Berger: dark and esoteric. (Photo courtesy of Gerry Bauer.)
A snapshot of Berger with his friend Zulkifar Ghose, taken in midtown Manhattan in the summer of 1974. (Photo courtesy of Betty Sue Flowers.)
This marked-up manuscript page comes from a story called “Gibberish,” from Berger’s original short story collection Abnormal Occurrences.
In this 1984 letter to his agent, Don Congdon, Berger tells Congdon that he was mentioned on The David Susskind Show, a television talk show.
In this 1997 letter, Berger writes to Roger Donald, his editor at Little, Brown, about characters, props, and plot points in The Return of Little Big Man.
In 1997, Berger wrote to Congdon about communications from Michael Korda, editor in chief of the publisher Simon & Schuster, and Donald.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1985 by Thomas Berger
cover design by Michael Vrana
978-1-4804-0105-1
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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Thomas Berger, Nowhere: A Novel
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