Marjorie Morningstar (100 page)
Read Marjorie Morningstar Online
Authors: Herman Wouk
Tags: #Coming of Age, #Fiction / Jewish, #Jewish, #Fiction / Coming Of Age, #Fiction, #Literary, #Classics, #Fiction / Classics, #Fiction / Literary
That’s about all there was to the historic meeting. The cab was honking at the entrance
to the driveway a moment later. It was only then that she came out with the real reason
she’d kept me around so long, feeding me highballs. She’s the president of the women’s
branch of the local community chest—and would I come and speak at the annual dinner?
The girls had been egging her on for years to write to me, but she hadn’t been able
to drum up the nerve. She’d had enough to drink at this point, she said, to have the
gall to ask me. Well, what could I say? I said yes, of course. As a matter of fact
I don’t really mind. With the show opening in a month or so, it’s not a bad idea to
set the girls gossiping about me in a well-to-do suburb like Mamaroneck. Those women
buy a lot of matinee tickets. Though I daresay I’d have done it for Marjorie, whether
it made sense or not.
And there you are. The circle is closed.
Or is it? The mystery is solved. Or will it ever be, really? Writing this entry has
stirred me up in an unaccountable way. I’ve gone on and on, and I meant to dispose
of the whole thing in a page or so. I feel dissatisfied. I haven’t managed to say
what I wanted, or to indicate the quality of the meeting at all.
The thing is, this was a triumph I promised myself fifteen years ago. I can remember
so clearly how I daydreamed of presenting myself to Marjorie, a successful playwright,
when she’d be just another suburban housewife gone to seed. Well, I did it at last,
and it wasn’t a triumph at all.
There’s
the point I’m trying to get at. The person I wanted to triumph over is gone, that’s
the catch. I can’t carry my achievements backward fifteen years and flaunt them in
the face of Marjorie Morgenstern, the beautiful elusive girl I was so mad about. And
what satisfaction is there in crowing over the sweet-natured placid gray mama she
has turned into? For that matter, what satisfaction is it to the poor ambitious skinny
would-be writer of twenty years ago, little Wally, the South Wind stage manager, that
I met Mrs. Schwartz and got such awe and deference? It’s too late. He doesn’t exist
either.
But why should I care about all this? That’s the strange part. It’s all so dead, so
forgotten. Marjorie doesn’t haunt me; I haven’t thought about her, except casually
and without a trace of emotion, in a dozen years. Seeing her now, I can only be glad
she didn’t yield to my frantic puppy worship. The only remarkable thing about Mrs.
Schwartz is that she ever hoped to be remarkable, that she ever dreamed of being Marjorie
Morningstar. She couldn’t be a more run-of-the-mill wife and mother.
What troubles me, I guess, is the thought of the bright vision that has faded. To
me, she really was Marjorie Morningstar. I didn’t know whether she had any talent.
I didn’t care. She was everything sweet, radiant, pure, and beautiful in the world.
I know now that she was an ordinary girl, that the image existed only in my own mind,
that her radiance was the radiance of my own hungry young desires projected around
her. Still, I once saw that vision and loved it. Marjorie Morgenstern… What music
that name used to have for me! I still hear a faint echo, sweet as a far-off flute
playing Mozart, when I write the name. No doubt the land is full of nineteen-year-old
boys to whom names like Betty Jones, Hazel Klein, Sue Wilson have the same celestial
sound. It’s a sound I shall hear no more.
And if she wasn’t the bright angel I thought, she was a lovely girl; and where is
that girl now? She doesn’t even remember herself as she was. I am the only one on
the face of God’s earth, I’m sure, who still holds that picture in a dim corner of
memory. When I go, that will be the end of Marjorie Morningstar, to all eternity.
Yet how beautiful she was! She rises up before me as I write—in a blue dress, a black
raincoat, her face wet with rain, nineteen years old, in my arms and yet maddeningly
beyond my reach, my beautiful young love, kissing me once under the lilacs in the
rain. I have known most of the pleasant things I can expect in this life. I’m not
famous or distinguished, but I never really hoped I would be; and my limits have been
clear to me for a long time. I’ve had the success I aimed for. I’ll go on working,
and I’ll have more success, I’m reasonably sure. I’ve had the love of good-looking
women. If I’m fortunate, I may some day have what Milton Schwartz has, and what’s
been denied me: a wife I love, and children, and a warm happy home. But one thing
I know now I will never have—the triumph I once wanted above everything on earth,
the triumph I promised myself when I was a heartsick boy, the triumph that slipped
through my fingers yesterday, once for all. I will never have that second kiss from
Marjorie under the lilacs.
Herman Wouk is best known for the linked monumental books
The Winds of War
(1971) and
War and Remembrance
(1978), which were both number one bestsellers and remained on the
New York Times
list for over a year. Of his earlier works,
The Caine Mutiny
(1951) won the Pulitzer Prize, and
Marjorie Morningstar
followed, the most widely read American novel of 1955.
The Language God Talks
(2010), his most recent book, retraces much of Wouk’s own life: birth in the Bronx
to Russian immigrant parents, Columbia education, early radio comedy writing, years
in the wartime Pacific as a reserve naval officer, and renowned novelist. In the Judaic
field Wouk has written
This Is My God
(1959), a popular guide to the faith, and
The Will to Live On
(2001). Among his plays,
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
is an ongoing international success.
The papers and manuscripts of
The Winds of War, War and Remembrance,
and his subsequent works—including the memoir-novel
Inside, Outside,
his own favorite among his books—can now be found at the Library of Congress. The
library of Columbia University has the archive of his earlier works, among them
City Boy, Youngblood Hawke,
and
Don’t Stop the Carnival.
The author’s many honors include honorary degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
and Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.
He currently lives in Palm Springs, California, where he is writing a new book.
Novels
Aurora Dawn
(1947)
City Boy
(1948)
The Caine Mutiny
(1951)
Marjorie Morningstar
(1955)
Youngblood Hawke
(1962)
Don’t Stop the Carnival
(1965)
The Winds of War
(1971)
War and Remembrance
(1978)
Inside, Outside
(1985)
The Hope
(1993)
The Glory
(1994)
A Hole in Texas
(2004)
The Traitor
(1949)
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
(1953)
Nature’s Way
(1957)
This Is My God
(1959, revised 1988)
The Will to Live On
(2000)
The Language God Talks
(2010)
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Chapter 7. An Evening at the Zelenkos’
Chapter 13. A Kiss Under the Lilacs
Chapter 14. Marjorie at South Wind
Chapter 19. The South Wind Waltz
Chapter 24. The Engagement Party
Chapter 29. Brief Career of an Evangelist
Chapter 32. Dinner at the Waldorf
Chapter 33.
Princess Jones
is Produced
Chapter 34. Marsha’s Farewell Speech
Chapter 35. The Breaking of a Glass
Chapter 36. Another Glass Breaks
Chapter 38. How to Discard a Mistress Gracefully
Chapter 40. A First-Class Ticket to Europe
Chapter 41. The Man on the Boat Deck
Chapter 42. A Game of Ping-Pong
Chapter 44. In Pursuit of Noel
Chapter 46. The South Wind Waltz: Reprise
Chapter 47. The Man She Married
Chapter 48. Wally Wronken’s Diary
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons,
living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 1955 by Herman Wouk
Copyright © renewed 1983 by Herman Wouk
Cover design by Chika Azuma
Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning,
uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission
of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual
property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes),
prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected].
Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
First e-book edition: January 2013
NOTE:
Fictional liberties have been taken with place names, weather, eclipses, steamship
schedules, dates, and so forth. All the characters of the novel, with their names
and traits, are complete fictional inventions. Unintentional duplication of actual
names of people or business organizations may have occurred. But any resemblance to
actual people or events, in names, traits, or physical descriptions, is coincidental.
Real names of hotels, apartment houses, restaurants, ships, and business organizations
have occasionally been used where invented names would have sounded forced, but beyond
that, the characters and events in those places are fictitious.
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ISBN 978-0-316-24854-9
