15b
PARTISAN REVIEW
Sue was short, plump, rosy, and full of youthful energy that
was mistaken for intellectual curiosity. She was girlishly pert and
pretty, and her shining eyes and delicately fleshy nose aroused
mixed feelings of sensuality and tenderness. She walked firmly,
head back, with a large blond bun on top that made her look like
a permanent student. She had just graduated from Brooklyn Col–
lege and lived with her family in Brooklyn, though she planned
to take a small apartment in the Village as soon as she could per–
suade her parents it was respectable. When Stanley met her, she was
working as a librarian at the Public Library, and he saw her quite
frequently because going to the Library was part of Stanley's daily
routine. He went there to keep up with the new magazines and the
latest literary movements, but the gossip was that he also went
there because, in the absence of a cafe life in New York, he was
likely to find people to talk to at the Library. He would drop in
regularly to chat with Sue, or get her to sneak out for a cigarette,
and soon he began to wait for her to sign out every day at
five o'clock, when they went down to Eighth Street for dinner, and
then a round of the bars in search of conversation.
Mter a few months, Sue began to bring Stanley home for din–
ner and spent Sundays with him. Soon her parents came to think
of him as a possible son-in-law, and since Sue was their only child,
who represented in their minds the main reason they had worked so
hard all these years in the little drygoods store they owned in the
neighborhood, this prospect filled them with great anxiety. They
questioned her about Stanley's "intentions" and "future." Sue would
answer with increasing irritation that they tried to reduce all hu–
man relations to dollars and cents, which they could not under–
stand since their own experience had taught them that a job and
a home were what made people human if not happy.
One evening Sue's father decided to assert his paternal rights.
Trying tactfully to steer the conversation to a discussion of Stan–
ley's ability to "provide for his daughter," he asked Stanley whether
he thought America was in for another depression. Rising to the
occasion, Stanley delivered an eloquent talk, full of amusing and
ironic examples, on the permanent depression of modern culture,
pointing out that society is by nature manic, while culture
is
de–
pressive, though, he added, "in the highest periods, such as the
