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RONALD SUKENICK % ' - • ! ■ . V A \ . ’ • *• p > - • F v'V ' /* j FICTION "t COLLECTIVE LONG TALKING BAD CONDITIONS BLUES BOOKS BY RONALD SUKENICK Long Talking Bad Conditions Blues 98.6 Out, a novel The Death of the Novel and Other Stories Up, a novel Wallace Stevens: Musing the Obscure ~bkj^ hJOu^Ltr^r im**j--- C'Xa. qJUVocJL OpOU C. , MaXuLaMsc£o k> 0~ J^wv^puXf J&r^o^x {b^sdU \ iJLterfM*W$ CO pAj^a^M(Ka cajJlQ-J 6j$- op Uo-<nJL 1>14 LONG TALK! NG BAD CONDITIONS BLUES by Ronald Sukenick FICTION COLLECTIVE, INC. A NEW YORK Cover by Bobi Haldeman and Ed Huston. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the magazines Granta, Luna Park, and Ploughshares; in which portions of this novel first appeared. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resem¬ blance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The publication of this book is in part made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Commit¬ tee on University Scholarly Publications of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the New York State Council on the Arts; and with the cooperation of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative (New York) and the Department of English of the University of Washington at Seattle. First Edition Copyright ©1979 by Ronald Sukenick All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog No. 79-52030 ISBN: 0-914590-60-X (hardcover) ISBN: 0-914590-61-8 (paperback) Published by FICTION COLLECTIVE, INC. ■* Production by Coda Press, Inc. Distributed by: George Braziller, Inc. One Park Avenue New York, N.Y. 10016 for Adek 1 from his apartment on Ferrell Anderson Place he liked to walk down to the quai which the local inhabitants referred to as The Reiser for reasons Carl was not able to determine but he somehow always lost his way on the way and found himself in a puzzle of winding and oblique streets compli¬ cated intersections which were not in themselves unplea¬ sant in fact he would invariably find a series of book stalls an area of shops a neighborhood of fascinating if unpre¬ tentious architecture so that he would soon forget his original destination while absorbed in browsing through a collection of early Rhodesian medical texts or a group of mementos from the 1923 World Cup or speculating on the origins of a variation in the style of dormer windows in regional balloon frame houses at first he would often ask directions from policemen or at news stands but he understood the local turn of speech badly and spoke it even less well since he was never able to master the accent and rhythm finally it occurred to him that the crucial thing was detail and that the kind of detail did not much matter so he concentrated on that as he wandered through the streets addressing his fumbling questions to the natives famous for their impatience with strangers usually getting nowhere if not happily at least quite absorbed and he found if he paid attention sometimes he would stumble on a real find like the time he wandered into a club in Newcomb Alley to discover that Kenny Clarke was the featured artist though unfortunately it was Monday the day they always interrupted the regular schedule to host a miscellaneous collection of third rate locals and he was never able to find his way back to the place again even with the help of a city map he gave in and bought for the absurd price of five balls which he found useless due to its inaccuracy capricious scale and tiny print he eventually gave it to his girlfriend in the hope she would get lost the problem with Charleen and first of all he could never tolerate her name even in the early days when they were very much in love was not 2 so much that she was unfaithful though that in fact was not something that bothered him in fact he fundamentally approved since it coincided with his ideas such as they were maybe it would be better to call them attitudes since they weren't very well thought out on a theoretical basis but this was no accident either since one of his ideas or attitudes was that he didn't believe in ideas abstraction went against his nature he would leave out his yet people change do they not but unfortunately Charleen was one of those who did not however much he reasoned and pleaded or crapped away the night in vicious arguments at the end of which the birds chirping and nothing settled he would swear he was leaving her for good but never got around to it maddened exhausted and hungry they would eat some kippers and bread drink a little schnapps and coca cola a drink they hade invented in The Smiling Lemming on Ferrell Anderson Place go to bed make love and start all over again the next day getting up usually around one or two in the afternoon disgusted with themselves and with each other and with the room which was strewn with dirty clothing bread crumbs cigarette butts and bits of kipper and at such moments he wished most of all he had a cat and over coffee he would once more try to explain to her very patiently that unfaithfulness he could accept it was fine it was possibly even desirable but that unfaithfulness combined with crazed and vicious jealousy was hard to take and that her obstinate refusal to admit its existence did not advance the discussion and then he would try to find his way usually unsuccessfully to Veronica's place whose name he at least liked and with whom he could at least talk if only at the level of harmless drivel but would often digress into a gallery or perhaps dreamily get involved in watching a good pick-up basket¬ ball game in Robinson Square Park but he never worried because he knew he was always bound to meet either Charleen or Veronica or one of his three friends in some