158
PARTISAN REVIEW
At first, Sue took over as many of Stanley's opinions as she
could understand, just as she took over his other possessions; and
his
ideas, after all, made up the bulk of his property. Sue partici–
pated, for as long as she could keep awake, in the nightly discus–
sions with Stanley's friends of the most recent and most vital prob–
lems, though she was often caught flatfooted and had to shift her
views abruptly, since Stanley's thinking was quite flexible, his main
concern being, as he put it, "to speculate about the implications of a
problem" rather than take a definite position, and it was impossi–
ble to foresee at any moment what direction his speculations might
take.
Mter a few months, however, Sue became less interested in
Stanley'S ideas and more absorbed in making existence more com–
fortable. She began to agitate for an apartment, a three-room apart–
ment, fixed up with their own things, that could be kept clean and
neat. "Wouldn't it be nice," Sue kept saying to Stanley, "to have
a bedroom separate from the living room." But Stanley was not
impressed because he did not place any special value on sleeping,
nor did he think conversation was affected in any way by the offi–
cial function of the room in which it took place. Sue, on the other
hand, was too sleepy to keep up with the nightly discussions, and got
into the habit of spending the evening on household chores and
going to bed early while Stanley, forced to look for stimulation out–
side, prowled around at night like a modern Ulysses in search of
ideas.
The marriage gradually dissolved, as Stanley became bored with
what he called "Sue's drive to recreate the world in the image of
Flatbush." The end came when Sue told Stanley she would like
to have a child, though she knew he believed the production of
children was the lowest form of creation. "People who cannot pro–
duce ideas," Stanley often said, "are reduced to creating children–
or owning dogs." They began to go their separate ways, and some–
times weeks passed before Stanley would show up at the room,
while Sue would spend week ends at home with her parents.
One day Sue packed and moved back to Brooklyn, quietly,
liked a displaced child, holding on to her faith in Stanley, but un–
able to understand why she had lost him. Her parents were only
too glad to have her back and to forgive her "foolishness," especial-
