"THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL"
By David De London
15 July 2008
"Several years ago while trekking about in far northeastern Arkansas, I came upon a small town where a famous author once lived for a short while, and some say wrote the Great American Novel while he lived there. Just off the town square there were several small shops, antiques, gifts, unique shops. I have an addiction for hard cover books and whenever the opportunity arises indulge myself in pawing through dusty boxes and shelves in stores like those. I've found rather obscure volumes that way, authors no one ever heard of writing about things no one ever heard of. Still, the hunt is half the fun.
On this particular occasion, underneath an old orange crate full of Reader's Digest from the 1950s, I discovered a very dirty, very beat-up typewriter case. It looked like it should have been trashed 50 years ago, but there it was, still taking up space and gathering dust. Actually it was in front of another box of books farther back that I wanted to dig into, in moving the ratty old thing it fell open. Inside, the well-pounded old machine still resided, and still on its mildewed roller was a sheet of brittle, yellowed paper half filled, the years fading the words nearly beyond reading.
I sat down on the orange crate next to an overflowing display case, the ancient machine on my lap, and began to read. I'd found a letter, begun in the fall of 1939, from that famous author, to his sweetheart. The letter wasn't to his wife, but to someone else. I knew a little of his history and by the standards of his time he was considered a bit of a 'womanizer.' But the words he'd put down to the lady in the letter were not the words of a 'Sorry SOB,' rather the words of a man who'd found something, someone extraordinary, late in mid-life, someone who'd shared his mind and his heart and his soul, and to whom he was now saying goodbye.
The world would soon go up in flames, war spanning the globe, and the hopes and dreams of two people paled into insignificance against the magnitude of the unfolding drama of world conflict. The letter was never finished. It was never sent. Perhaps the lady never knew how he really felt. But then again perhaps she did.
I sat there for awhile, holding history in my hands, and realized that I just could not let it go. Very carefully I closed the lid on the case, hoisted my decrepit and creaking bones up off the orange crate and took the battered old box to the front of the store. I asked the price as it had not been marked, and shortly left, my prize clutched tightly under my arm, for the grand sum of ten dollars.
The ancient Remington Portable still works. I get it out now and then, peck out a few words, just imagining the exotic places it must have gone, the stories, the letters, even a novel or two. Perhaps somewhere down deep in its dark and dusty mechanical innards still lurks an echo, a ghost, a lost word or phrase, a sleeping spirit waiting for a kindred soul, someone to touch the keys, to create another Great American Novel."
More Feature Stories
More stories by David De London
