You don’t have to read this; it’s about a dream I just had. Your dreams are of interest only to yourself.
I got a job at the New York Times. I am not sure how this happened, but it appears I had some vague social friends there. Not my own friends, for the most part, but those of Mr. Ashley, my perennial penniless benefactor. The friends-of-friends are all folks with names like Bartle Bull and Monroe Denton. One of them lives in an old stone townhouse on the corner, somewhere in the East 40s or 50s. Riding home on my bike recently, I noticed there was a cocktail party/barbeque going on there, behind his wrought-iron garden rail.
It will be understood that my job at the Times was not really at the New York Times, but rather a phantasmagorical dream-Times, populated mostly by upper-class gentiles who wander the floors with whiskey sours and panatellas in hand. The men are large and wear tweed coats, like the real-life Monroe.
Anyway I show up at the job, and it feels like an ad agency. There are two types of people: the “creatives” who do the donkey-work and are surly and inarticulate, and the nice jolly account folks, who wander the floors and chat you up. Somebody has told the creatives that I am a great Creative person, a designer of some sort. They try to find work for me to do. I am assigned a blank dummy of a Style section, and told to rough out the layout. I ask to see past issues of the Style section, as well as some content. They give me one torn page and a couple of pictures. I sit down at a drafting table and start to draw lines with a non-repro-blue pencil. This is like a very very bad temp job.
One of the Ashley friends drops by and tells me not to sweat it. The layout work probably isn’t needed for a few days. Anyway, I should be writing and doing editorial work. “Even copyediting would be better than this!”
He hands me a list of article ideas and promises to square it with the powers that be. I tell him I saw him hanging out at his barbecue a few days before. He invites me out for a drink and introduces me to a few other swells. “Monroe, of course I know you. You are from Andersonville.”
Next day at work, my bosses in the “creative” den tell me that I am off the Style project, because I clearly don’t know what I am doing. They are assigning it to the freelancer Allison, who is very talented at finding places to stick pictures on a page. They reverently show me her portfolio. It is about the size of a scrapbook. Each page has a rectangular hole cut in it. These are examples of where to stick pictures. I laugh and snort with contempt.
In my pocket I have business cards from my contacts in editorial. I am sure they will be happy to see me.
EXEGESIS: If this a moral allegory, it is a very transparent one.
