Read Voice of Our Shadow for Free Online
Authors: Jonathan Carroll
had graduated. Two more of my short stories had been published, and I wondered excitedly if I might have the makings of a real writer. I realize now he would have liked me to stay with him for a while, but he said he thought Europe was a good idea.
My last semester in college was full of a girl named Olivia Lofting. It was the first time I’d ever really fallen hard for someone, and there was a period when I needed Olivia as I needed air. She liked me because I had money and a certain prestige on campus, but she kept reminding me her heart belonged to a guy who had graduated the year before and was serving a hitch in the Army. I did what I could to lure her away, but she remained true to him despite the fact we’d been sleeping together since our third date.
May came, and so did Olivia’s boyfriend, home on leave. I saw the two of them one afternoon at the Student Center. They were so obviously mad for each other and so obviously tired from making love that I went right to the bathroom and sat on a toilet for an hour with my face in my hands.
She called after he left, but I didn’t have the strength to see her again. Oddly enough, my refusal sparked her interest, and for the few weeks left of the year, we had one endless conversation after another over the phone. The last time we talked she demanded we get together. I asked if she was a sadist, and with a delighted laugh she said she probably was. I had barely enough willpower to say no, but did I ever hate myself after I hung up and realized how unnecessarily empty my bed would be that night.
Although Vienna was always in the back of my mind, I flew to London and spent the summer trying on different cities — Munich, Copenhagen, Milan — before I realized there really was only one place for me.
Ironically, I arrived just as the German version of The Voice of Our Shadow was premiering at the Theatre an der Josefstädt. Out of what I’m sure he thought was kindness, Phil Westberg told the Austrians I was there, and for a month or two I was the belle of the ball. Again, all I did was backpedal about my involvement in the original production, only this time auf deutsch .
Luckily the Viennese critics didn’t like the play; after a month’s run it packed its bag and went back to America. That ended my notoriety as well, and from then on I was blissfully anonymous. The one good thing that came from Shadow rearing its confusing head in Wien was that I met a lot of important people who, again assuming I’d been the moving force behind the play, began to give me writing assignments as soon as they heard I wanted to settle down there. The pay for these assignments was usually terrible, but I was making new contacts all the time. When the International Herald Tribune did a supplement on Austria, a friend snuck me in the back door, and they published a little article I’d done on the Bregenz Summer Festival.
About the time I started making money from my articles, my father remarried and I returned to America for the wedding. It was my first time back in two years, and I was bowled over by the speed and intensity of the States. So much stimulus! So many things to see and buy and do! I loved it for two weeks, but then hurried back to my Vienna, where things were just the way I liked them — quiet and settled and cozily dull.
I was twenty-four, and in some distant, mute part of my brain I had the notion it was time to try writing my world-beater, gargantuan novel. When I returned from America I started … and started again and started again … until I had worn out all my thin beginnings. That was all right, but too quickly I realized I had no middles or ends to work on instead. At that point I bowed out of the race for the Great American Novel.
I am convinced every writer would like to be either a poet or a novelist, but in my case the realization that I would never be another Hart Crane or Tolstoy wasn’t too painful. It might have been a couple of years earlier, but
My last semester in college was full of a girl named Olivia Lofting. It was the first time I’d ever really fallen hard for someone, and there was a period when I needed Olivia as I needed air. She liked me because I had money and a certain prestige on campus, but she kept reminding me her heart belonged to a guy who had graduated the year before and was serving a hitch in the Army. I did what I could to lure her away, but she remained true to him despite the fact we’d been sleeping together since our third date.
May came, and so did Olivia’s boyfriend, home on leave. I saw the two of them one afternoon at the Student Center. They were so obviously mad for each other and so obviously tired from making love that I went right to the bathroom and sat on a toilet for an hour with my face in my hands.
She called after he left, but I didn’t have the strength to see her again. Oddly enough, my refusal sparked her interest, and for the few weeks left of the year, we had one endless conversation after another over the phone. The last time we talked she demanded we get together. I asked if she was a sadist, and with a delighted laugh she said she probably was. I had barely enough willpower to say no, but did I ever hate myself after I hung up and realized how unnecessarily empty my bed would be that night.
Although Vienna was always in the back of my mind, I flew to London and spent the summer trying on different cities — Munich, Copenhagen, Milan — before I realized there really was only one place for me.
Ironically, I arrived just as the German version of The Voice of Our Shadow was premiering at the Theatre an der Josefstädt. Out of what I’m sure he thought was kindness, Phil Westberg told the Austrians I was there, and for a month or two I was the belle of the ball. Again, all I did was backpedal about my involvement in the original production, only this time auf deutsch .
Luckily the Viennese critics didn’t like the play; after a month’s run it packed its bag and went back to America. That ended my notoriety as well, and from then on I was blissfully anonymous. The one good thing that came from Shadow rearing its confusing head in Wien was that I met a lot of important people who, again assuming I’d been the moving force behind the play, began to give me writing assignments as soon as they heard I wanted to settle down there. The pay for these assignments was usually terrible, but I was making new contacts all the time. When the International Herald Tribune did a supplement on Austria, a friend snuck me in the back door, and they published a little article I’d done on the Bregenz Summer Festival.
About the time I started making money from my articles, my father remarried and I returned to America for the wedding. It was my first time back in two years, and I was bowled over by the speed and intensity of the States. So much stimulus! So many things to see and buy and do! I loved it for two weeks, but then hurried back to my Vienna, where things were just the way I liked them — quiet and settled and cozily dull.
I was twenty-four, and in some distant, mute part of my brain I had the notion it was time to try writing my world-beater, gargantuan novel. When I returned from America I started … and started again and started again … until I had worn out all my thin beginnings. That was all right, but too quickly I realized I had no middles or ends to work on instead. At that point I bowed out of the race for the Great American Novel.
I am convinced every writer would like to be either a poet or a novelist, but in my case the realization that I would never be another Hart Crane or Tolstoy wasn’t too painful. It might have been a couple of years earlier, but