A free story from Nathanael West

By the end of 1934, the cumulative royalties for his first three books totaled $780; he made far more selling the movie rights for his largely unread fictional works, and he pulled in $7,500 for a film treatment (“Flight South”) that was never even produced. Yet he initially found his day job taxing; shortly after he started his screenwriting gig with Columbia Pictures in 1933, he wrote to a friend: “This stuff about easy work is all wrong. My hours are from ten in the morning to six at night with a full day on Saturday. They gave me a job to do five minutes after I sat down in my office -- a scenario about a beauty parlor -- and I am expected to turn out pages and pages a day.”

For an hour after his barber left him, Mr. Eugene Klingspiel, West Coast head of Gargantual Pictures, worked ceaselessly. First he read The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and The Film Daily. Then he measured out two spoonfuls of bicarbonate and lay down on the couch to make decisions. Before long Mr. Klingspiel had fallen into what he called a gentle reverie. He saw Gargantual Pictures swallowing its competitors like a boa-constrictor, engulfing whole amusement chains. In a delicious half-doze, he found himself wondering whether to absorb Balaban & Katz; but finding no use for Katz, he absorbed only Balaban, and turned next to Spyros Skouras and his seven brothers. Perhaps at the outset he ought to absorb only three of them. But which three? The three in the middle or two on one end and one on the other? Finally he arranged the eight Skourases into a squad of tin soldiers and executed five at random. The repeated buzz of the dictograph cut short his delicious sport. He flipped the switch irritably. “Who is it?” “Hwonh hwonh hwonh hwonh hwonh.” “I’ll see them later,” said Mr. Klingspiel. “Send in Charlie Baer.”