Tyler Thomas’s first book, a collection of short stories entitled “The View From Here,” sold modestly before it was remaindered and dumped on a three-books-for-$10 table at the chain bookstores.
Tyler knew it was only a short distance from remainder’s table to pulp. He tortured himself by haunting the stores and watching customers pick up his book, flip through a few pages and place it back on the table. He was asked to leave several stores after harassing customers for not buying the book.
Tyler decided he’d next try his hand at a novel. His agent told him that many readers see the novel as a more exalted art form. Short stories were an under-developed poor relation.
But his noir detective novel set in Brooklyn just wasn’t coming to life. The Story lay on the page as flat as a dead flounder on a deserted pier. Tyler spiraled downward into an existential funk, a deep trough of despondency. Writer’s block, which he visualized as a huge, granite boulder, bent him double.
Heroically, Tyler continued to confront the blank white space day after day, trying to coax a word, a sentence, perhaps, even a usable paragraph, onto the page.
Eventually, it happened: an idea, albeit for a short story, a setting, possible characters, a plot line -- the mysterious alchemy of the creative process. It was coming together and Tyler felt a huge weight starting to lift.
After several false starts, he wrote the opening scene of a story he called “Jazz Age Lives.”
Manhattan in the 1920s was a sporting town, a theater town, an event town, a nightclub town, a drinking town, a money town, a ticker-tape parade town.
Handsome, rich young men swanned about, partied all night, listened to jazz in Harlem, lingered in midtown speakeasies, danced the Charlestown and Black Bottom, and flirted with young woman who flirted back, wore their dresses short, their hair shorter, smoked and went out with whomever they wanted.
Tyler liked it. It was not another Gatsby, nor was it meant to be. He knew enough not to fall in love with his own prose. “It's a start,” he thought, and understood there was a long way to go.
Tyler was born well after the Jazz Age had faded from memory and into myth. But he was fascinated by stories about speakeasies and bootleggers, legendary nightclubs and larger than life characters, young men with money to burn and the flappers they squired around town in expensive cars, the Stock Market.
Tyler decided he needed four characters. More would be unwieldy in a short story; fewer would narrow the story he wanted to tell.
Tyler imagined Aloysius David Cameron, who worked in the Manhattan office of the family-owned investment bank; Edward John Buckley, who ran the New York office of his father’s trucking business which smuggled liquor into prohibition America from Canada; Bradley Townsend, a stock broker; and Mary Wentford, Townsend’s relative from Montana, who was put in his charge with the understanding that Townsend would help her meet the right people and find a suitable husband.
Tyler wrote:
Aloysius David Cameron was named for his great-grandfather who founded the family’s investment bank in the 19th Century. Call him David.
He was raised in a world of genteel wealth, with his future carefully plotted by his father: a degree in finance from Yale followed by a senior management position in the Manhattan office of the family business where he would be groomed to succeed his father as president.
David’s path was paved with his father’s money. It never occurred to him to find a different way.
Tyler thought it was coming together when Aloysius David Cameron complained.
“Tyler,” David whispered in his ear. “Can we we talk? You make me weak and sheep-like. Do you think I would agree to follow in my father’s footsteps without objecting?”
Tyler heard about authors who lose control of their characters and characters that hijack a story. He wasn’t about to let it happen. But he also understood that characters could develop in ways the author never anticipated. Perhaps David was on to something.
“Respectfully, I don’t think you would protest,” Tyler said. “That’s not how I see you. Your father is making it too easy for you. And, to be blunt, it serves my purpose.”
David sighed. “Well, it’s your story. But I think my character would be more interesting if he rebelled, however briefly, against his father’s demands.”
“You know, you’re probably going to wind up exactly in the same place regardless,” Tyler said.
“You’re the writer,” David said resignedly. “But see if you can do anything. I would appreciate it.”
Tyler decided to try to accommodate David’s concerns. He wrote:
David was bored at Yale. He spent most of his free time in private clubs in New Haven, where his family name and money gained him instant acceptance, and carousing with the debs attending exclusive finishing schools in the area. He rarely saw the inside of the library.
When his father received a second notice that David was in danger of being booted out because of low grades, the old man had his chauffeur take him to New Haven where he stormed into Mory’s, David’s eating club, to confront his son.
“What do you think you’re up to,” he demanded. “I have a great deal of money invested in you and your future, and you’re about to piss it away.”
“Maybe I want a different future,” David protested.
“And what exactly do you have in mind,” the senior Cameron countered.
“Lots of things,” David replied, his voice trailing off.
“Son, no Cameron has ever failed to graduate from Yale. If you intend to be the first, fine, but you will have to make your own way in life, without any financial help from the family.”
The senior Cameron had played his trump card. David may have been prepared to strike his own path, but had always counted on a cushion of family wealth.
David’s grades improved sufficiently to allow him to graduate, which his father guaranteed with a generous gift to the university. Yale named a building for him. That was the Cameron way.
“It’s better, not great,” David, told Tyler, “At least I tried to be my own man, but my father left me no choice.”
“I’m glad you approve,” Tyler said, and left it at that.
David met Edward John Buckley at Yale. Buckley claimed to be distantly related to the German House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which became the House of Windsor in Britain after the Great War.
His friends called him Buck.
Buck’s father was a teamster in upstate New York who started a small trucking company transporting produce between the U.S. and Canada. Prohibition created a lucrative, new market and Buck’s father, with a fleet of trucks and tough, seasoned drivers, was well positioned to profit from it.
He dreamed of bringing his son into the business. He also was a firm believer in education, having only completed the eighth grade. He expected Yale to smooth Buck’s rough edges, introduce him the right people and future customers, and prepare him to deal with the sharp operators and wise guys in New York.
“Mr. Thomas?”
Tyler sighed. It was Buck.
“Mr. Thomas, you’re kidding, right? The son of a truck driver from upstate New York related to the House of Saxe-Coburg something? Who’s going to believe that?”
“Buck, it’s who you claim to be. It doesn’t matter if it’s not true. The women you meet will believe it. You will be the bee’s knees.”
“The what?”
“It’s a good thing.”
“But how would I even know about Saxe whatever?
“Yale, maybe? Don’t worry. You will never have to explain. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
Manhattan was the only place Buck and David wanted to be. New York had an insatiable thirst for booze and good times. It was impossible not to make money. They made and spent lots of it, attracting an admiring crowd.
Buck, in particular, was catnip to the ladies. Shebas found his stories about his connection to British royalty irresistible
Debs and dolls, chorus girls and gold diggers, all vied for Buck’s eye. He was an attractive, young bootlegger, which added a frisson of danger to his appeal; something, David regretted, investment bankers lacked.
It didn’t hurt matters that Buck tooled about town in a yellow 1927 Franklin Bottail Roadster. David drove a Chrysler Series 70 Phaeton. It was a very nice car, but compared to Buck’s Franklin, it looked like a fliver.
Money and privilege created and inflated a sense of entitlement. Buck and David felt they were above it all. Literally. From Buck’s penthouse apartment at Fifth and Park they watched the clerks and shop girls on the street far below making their way to subway stations for rides to New York’s outer boroughs, Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx -- places they seldom, if ever, visited. There was simply no reason. As for New York’s fifth borough, Staten Island, it was merely a rumor.
“I wonder what their lives are like,” David once asked Buck.
“Don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never been on the subway.”
“Do you think they’re happy?”
“Hard to imagine.”
“Tyler?”
“What now, David?”
“We sound like superficial, unlikable people?”
“Well, you are. You are rich, spoiled, self-important and self-indulgent, interested only in making money and having a good time. This is a story set in Manhattan during the Jazz Age, not a monastery. Would you prefer to be a monk?”
“I don’t know what that is, Tyler. I only know what you want me to know.”
“Trust me, the answer is no. You are a product of your time. The Jazz Age made you and you made the Jazz Age. You can’t help yourselves.”
“But you’re the author. We are what you write. Can you make us more sympathetic?”
“Possibly. But, to be honest, I don’t know.”
When David and Buck weren’t at the Garden for the fights, or taking in the latest edition of the Follies, a Broadway show or a moving picture at the fabulous Roxy Theater, they would make the rounds of Manhattan’s best speakeasies and nightclubs.
The atmosphere inside the rooms was redolent with the scent of expensive perfume and the aroma of good booze, and charged with the promise of unbridled fun and sexual energy.
The future taking shape around them -- talking moving pictures, the radio and air travel – but they didn’t think about the future. Only the next party, drink, dance craze, the next good time, whatever and wherever it happened to be. The future could take care of itself.
**************************
It seemed a good time for Tyler to bring his final characters into the story. He wrote:
David met Bradley Townsend and his third cousin Mary Wentford, at Buck’s apartment.
Townsend worked on The Street, trading in the feverish, ever soaring stock market, making more money than he could spend (though not for lack of trying). He generously offered stock tips and inside information to his friends. Trading stocks was a license to print money and Townsend had both hands on the press.
Mary was the only daughter of Montana’s biggest rancher. Anxious to have her marry well and seeing no prospects among the boys in Montana, her parents shipped her off to finishing school in Switzerland to prepare her for a good marriage.
After Mary completed her training, her parents entrusted her care to Townsend, with the expectation that he would introduce her to the best of New York society.
Townsend provided Mary with a place to stay, but was indifferent to her marital prospects or the company she kept.
For her part, chafing at her parents’ expectations, Mary rebelled. Her preference in men ran to rough types, small-time gangsters and the enforcers and muscle that kept the illegal liquor pipelines open and flowing.
Mary was a careless tease in glad rags. She was having fun and marriage was the furthest thing from her mind.
“Excuse me, Mr. Thomas?”
It was Mary Wentford.
“Christ, what is it now,” Tyler thought. He was impatient with these interruptions by his characters, and growing less confident about his ability to tell their story. It was becoming difficult to resume writing each day, and fear of another writer’s block was starting to plague him.
“What can I do for you, Mary?”
“Is being a careless tease in glad rags and having fun a bad thing? And why am I attracted to such unsavory types?”
“Because they are so different from the nice boys you knew in Montana, Mary. You are young, attractive and living in one of the most exciting cities in the world. It’s only normal for you to want to experience all it has to offer, including things you were warned against in Montana.”
“Montana is not like Manhattan?”
Tyler chuckled. “No, Mary, Montana is not like Manhattan.
Tyler wrote:
David liked Mary and was becoming concerned that she was travelling too fast and recklessly, even for Manhattan. He urged Townsend to have a word with her, but his friend never found the time.
Finally, David took her aside.
“Mary, maybe you should slow down a little,” he said. “This town will devour you. I’ve seen it happen, especially to young women from small towns who fall in with the wrong crowd. This is a hard, unforgiving city of people on the make, and you could get trampled.”
“Thank you, David. I appreciate your concern. But I’ve never had so much fun. I can take care of myself. I’d rather take my chances here than being bored and wasting away in Montana.”
The writing was not going well. Tyler had a wonderful setting and time, but could only bring his characters to life on the page in fits and starts. He knew how their story would end, but didn’t know how he would get them there.
He decided to try working backwards from the end.
The stock market roared, the booze flowed; the bright lights of Broadway lit the night sky. It was a time of abandon, great excess and wild fun. There was no reason to believe the ride would ever stop.
“Every morning/Every evening/ ain’t we got fun?” they sang. “In the meantime/In between time.”
And that was the whole point.
Legends walked the streets: Babe Ruth, Lucky Lindy, Jack Dempsey, Mayor James “Gentleman Jimmy” Walker, Flo Ziegfeld, George Gershwin.
No one wanted to be anywhere else.
But the party would not last forever. When the Stock Market crashed it put a brutal end to the Jazz Age. It was over.
“It doesn't end well for us, does it?” Townsend asked Tyler.
“Or for thousands of others who lost everything. It was a terrible time.”
“I worked on Wall Street. I urged my friends to invest. They trusted me. How could I have done such a thing? I feel terrible.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself. You weren’t selling snake oil, but investments that earned your friends a great deal of money. You couldn’t have seen this coming.”
“What happens now?”
“It is not a happy ending for you, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t deserve a happy ending. Tell me.”
The night after the market crashed, Townsend and David rode the ferry all night between Manhattan and Staten Island.
Townsend’s mood shifted from despondent and regretful to hopeful and optimistic that the catastrophic collapse of the market was a temporary aberration, that it would soon recover and their world would be quickly restored.
“I’m so sorry I got you into this,” he said repeatedly to David as they rode the ferry across the bay. “Are you going to be okay?”
In the distance, on the far shore of Lower Manhattan, the buildings were dark, probably because of the late hour, but also suggesting the new reality.
“It’ll work out,” David tried to assure him. “I’ll be fine. What about you?”
Townsend paused for several moments, staring at the water. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.
They left the ferry in Manhattan as the sun was coming up and said their goodbyes.
“Call me if you need anything or want to talk,” Michael said.
“I will. Don’t worry about me.” Townsend walked away, hunched against the morning chill.
They didn’t speak again. Townsend died a week later under the wheels of a subway train at the Wall Street station. It was ruled an accident.
“Wow,” Townsend said after several moments. “That’s grim.”
“Sorry, Townsend. It’s how it has to be.”
“I suppose,” Townsend said. “What about my friends? My cousin Mary?"
“Mary’s parents hire the Pinkerton detective agency to track her down in New York and bring her back to Montana. She marries a successful grain dealer and settles in Bozeman.”
“Is she happy?”
“Who can say? I haven’t decided about Buck. Maybe he will be shot to death in a dispute with another bootlegger. Maybe he will drink himself to death. I don’t know yet, but it won’t be good.”
“And David?”
“Still sorting that out. I’m thinking that after his family’s investment bank goes under, he may travel to California and take a job in the finance office of a motion picture company. With the advent of talkies, the industry is about to take off and David is smart enough to want to get in on the ground floor. We’ll see.”
Tyler listened for more voices. Hearing none, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, searching for the rest of his story.
