Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

And another American writer, John Dos Passos, who is even better known among us and who provoked even more discussions in connection with the polemics on formalism in art, came in to see us and introduced us to Hemingway.

Incidentally, whenever mention was made some years ago of a soulless formalist, he was always understood to be some house manager by the name of Nezabudkin who had insulted an old lady for no good reason or who did not provide needed information on time. Nowadays no one thinks of house managers, and the words “a soulless formalist” do not fail to call forth in memory the figure of some writer or composer or of some other hairy votary of the Muses.

The round-headed, broad-nosed Dos Passos stutters a little. He begins every sentence with a laugh, but he ends it seriously. He looked at us benevolently and said:

“I am writing a new book. It is called Big Money. I wonder how it will fare. Every one of my succeeding books has had a smaller circulation than its predecessor: 42nd Parallelled a circulation of twenty thousand copies; 1919, fifteen thousand; this one will probably have ten thousand.

”

When we told Dos Passos that ten thousand copies of his 1919 disappeared from Soviet book counters in several hours, he replied:

“In your country people have been taught to read books, but with us here… Listen, we’ll have to get together some time and have dinner in the Hollywood Restaurant on Broadway. There you will see what occupies the average American while in your country people read books.

You will see the happiness of a New York counter-jumper.”

Hemingway came to New York for a week. His permanent home is at Key West, a small town at the extreme southern tip of Florida. He proved to be a large man with moustaches and a peeling sunburnt nose. He wore flannel trousers, a woollen vest which did not come together on his mighty chest, and his bare feet were in house slippers.

We stood together, in the middle of one of the hotel rooms in which Hemingway lived, engaged in the usual American occupation.

In our hands were high and wide glasses of highballs – whisky mixed with water. So far as we have been able to observe, everything in America begins with a drink. Even when we came on literary business to our publishers, Farrar and Rinehart, the gay, red-headed Mr. Farrar, publisher and poet, at once led us into their library. He had many books there, but also a large icebox.