All of the faculty were excited, none more so than David. He’d volunteered to make the six- hour round trip from Dartmouth to Great Barrington. It would be no trouble, he told his colleagues. Besides, it would give him a chance to get to know Pauline.
He loved driving, especially the longer journeys. Indeed, since arriving in America, it was one of the things he loved most, the feeling of no limits, expansiveness, freedom. Back home, a journey like this—London to Birmingham, say—would have filled him with dread, but not here, in New Hampshire. For one thing, the quality of light was different, and he had always loved American light, even though it meant he’d had to spend too much time in the dark in order to see it. You see, in England he went to the movies; in America he took to the road.
As he followed the signs for the Berkshire Trail, David thought of Howard Hawks’s Red River. He’d seen the film as a boy, but felt its impact all his adult life. Pauline, he knew, was not a fan of westerns. He guessed it was a question of temperament—plus, she had grown up in the real west. Still, she liked Hawks, particularly the comedies, and so did he; there’d be common ground.
In one sense he felt as though he already knew her. After all, he’d been reading her for years, first in Sight & Sound, where she would appear sporadically but always with an attendant fuss in the following month’s letters page—mostly by earnest young men offended by the force and confidence of her opinions. And he’d seized upon her first book, with its delicious, punning title. Now that he was in America, and she was at The New Yorker, he could pretty much read her every week and usually did. It wasn’t as though he always agreed with her—far from it—but she was lively and provocative and seemed—on the page, at least—to have nothing between herself and her voice: she came through unmediated. He wondered where this quality came from—was it inherently American? He had wanted to do something similar with his own writing—had longed to—but felt, until recently, that he was holding back. Still, he was getting used to driving on the other side of the road… He caught himself in the mirror. One thing he was sure about: as much as he loved her work, he never felt the need—unlike some—to imitate her; he had his own thing going on and it had brought him this far: a new life in America, and all that that entailed—upheaval, people left behind, pain certainly, but most of all a newfound sense of himself. Besides, his book was out—his crazy book!—and it was causing a stir. Elia Kazan had threatened to sue—now that was inherently American—while Michael Powell felt that, finally, someone understood him. Both responses thrilled him, especially Mickey Powell’s, though he felt, mischievously perhaps, that Kazan’s litigious response was actually tacit confirmation of David’s instincts: he’d nailed the son of a bitch!
He’d had such a blast in the writing, though there were times when he thought the publisher might turn it down, that it was not what they’d signed up for—what kind of dictionary is this?—that it was not what he’d signed up for, but he couldn’t stop writing, making it more personal. Night after night he acquired more pages, new entries, and all after long days spent teaching—and American students at that, far from home, as if in anticipation of his life to come. And now the book was out there, blazing a trail, picking up its own passengers.
Had Pauline read it, he wondered. They’d spoken briefly on the phone the night before—she hadn’t mentioned his book, nor had he—but their conversation was just enough to get a further sense of the woman behind that voice. He liked her, or so he thought. And it made him almost giddy to think he was going to have her all to himself for however long the journey took. He couldn’t help but frame their imminent trip as a scene in a film. He had always done this—life as movie, singular. He chuckled to himself. He knew that Pauline was more “It Happened One Night” than “Journey to Italy”. Still, it was the latter he had in mind as he turned down Route 102, deep in the heart of the Berkshires, with the rear projection for once looking like the real thing.
—MM
Running From The Reels 