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Interior Shot
- University of Iowa Press
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- Additional Information
Interior Shot "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," the story by Delmore Schwartz that prompted my mother to write him a fan letter, is one of my favorite stories, too-one of the finest stories ever written, I think. Of course, my mother and I are not the only fans ofthis story. Nabokov called it one ofthe finest half-dozen contemporary stories, and it was published two years after Schwartz wrote it (at the age oftwenty-one) in the first issue ofPartisan Review, as the lead story, before works by Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, andJames T. Farrell. I need to give a synopsis ofthis story, which, like many great ones, breaks the rules. In it, the narrator watches a film ofthe day ofhis parents ' engagement. I think it is the year 1909. I feel as if! were in a motion picture theatre , the long arm oflight crossing the darkness and spinning, my eyes fixed on the screen. This is a silent picture as ifan old Biograph one, in which the actors are dressed in ridiculously old-fashioned clothes, and one flash succeeds another with suddenjumps. The actors too seem to jump about and walk too fast .... It is Sunday afternoon ,]une 12th, 1909, and my father is walking down the quiet streets ofBrooklyn on his way to visit my mother .... The film, seen initially from the father's point ofview, follows him as he walks the streets of Brooklyn to the house of the narrator's mother; he's pondering whether he really wants to marry her or not. When he arrives at the house, the father is greeted warmly but with a little amusement by the family, because ofhis awkwardness. We see, in succession, the narrator's aunt, a young girl, who answers the door and takes his hat, the narrator's uncle, a boy of twelve in the film who runs in from outside, the grandfather, who engages the father in conversation, and rubs his beard thoughtfully when his daughter comes down the stairs and he wonders what kind ofhusband this man will make. At this point, the film breaks, the audience 75 Nola claps in impatience, and when the film is repaired, we once again see the same scene over. Throughout the story, we are not allowed to simply view this as unadorned narrative. Schwartz makes sure that we know that we are watching a film, that the self-consciousness ofthe story is an integral part ofthe story. My father tells my mother how much money he has made in the past week, exaggerating an amount that need not be exaggerated. But my father has always felt that actualities somehow fall short. Suddenly, I begin to weep. The determined old lady who sits next to me in the theater is annoyed and looks at me with an angry face, and being intimidated, I stop ... Meanwhile, I have missed something , for here are my father and my mother alighting at the last stop, Coney Island. The narrator, after becoming strangely moved by the sight of his parents strolling along the boardwalk and watching the ocean waves crashing, gets up and goes to the men's room to calm himseif, and when he returns his parents are riding the merry-go-round. At dinner, the father finally proposes, the mother breaks down in tears, and it's here that the narrator jumps up in his seat and yells, "Don't do it. It's not too late to change your minds, both of you. Nothing good will come of it, only remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous." The audience, of course, treats him like a lunatic. He's shushed, people stare, the lady beside him tells him he'll be put out, the usher flashes his flashlight at him. And so, the narrator, dejected, closes his eyes, unable to watch. But eventually, he emerges from his sulk and begins to take an interest in the film again. The young couple go to a photographer, who, interested not in money but only in art, keeps readjusting the poses ofthe lovers until the father grows impatient. His son in the audience feels sympathy for the photographer, knows how he feels, but it is the father's implacable will that must be obeyed, and finally, he cajoles the photographer into snapping the photo, which, when it is developed, shows the father's face in an unnatural grimace. The mother drags the father to a fortune-teller, but now he's...