Billy Wilder on Assignment by Noah Isenberg (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

turning more and more impassioned. “He has the paragraph in his pocket,” someone explains.

So today is the day of destiny. For us all. I don’t consider this type of prophecy the end of the world, even if it’s tied to a specific day. But now that I’m reminded of it, I do feel obliged to be a little attentive. I find myself thinking of it as I open the mail, or read the latest telegrams. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Natural catastrophes—bloody confrontations—accidents—a flight across the ocean. It’s sure to be fateful for many, but not for everyone. There is no hint of an earthshaking event. But now I’m overcome with major misgivings about whether it is at all possible to take stock of this day right now, even just concerning the significance, or insignificance, of an incident. Anything can start out unrecognizably, anything can turn into a dire fate. I realize how flippant I’m being. All at once everything becomes important and serious.

How would it be if, for just one day, everyone all of a sudden were to regard everything as important and serious? The mechanized sequence of their family life, the pattern underlying their professional work. Saying good morning to their wives, signing documents.—Day of destiny?

Berliner Börsen Courier, June 4, 1927

Wanted: Perfect Optimist

AN IMAGINARY DISPATCH FROM NEW YORK CITY

April 14. I read this announcement in today’s New York Herald:

Wanted:

Short, fat man with a bald head and good teeth. Forty dollars a week.

Come tomorrow between eight and ten.

Gridgeman,

Marmalade wholesale, 293 Ninth Street.

April 15. I was the first. Mister Gridgeman looked over my physique, examined my bald head and teeth, then said, “Smile.” I didn’t quite understand, and he repeated his request. The situation was so odd that I found it a little hard to start grinning from ear to ear. “So, you’re hired.” Mister Gridgeman clapped me on the back with a hand as hard as steel. We went into his private office. He pointed to a leather chair right across from his desk. “Your task will be to sit in this armchair every day from eight to two. You can read detective stories, write memoirs, smoke, even darn socks for all I care. But you have to smile, and keep on smiling. That’s the essential thing. Forty dollars a week. And you start tomorrow. Goodbye.”

April 16. I have a sleepless night behind me. This Mister Gridgeman seems to be insane. Or does he want to showcase me to his customers, claiming that my corpulence comes solely from my regular indulgence in the unrivaled Gridgeman marmalade?—I’m right in place at eight on the dot. Mister Gridgeman is already there. I sit down. I start my work a bit bashfully. I smile over at Mister Gridgeman. Here and there I look around me. Highly instructive statistics about the protein content of California plums and some ten clever sayings are mounted on the walls, praising Gridgeman bananas as skyscrapers of goodness, nutritional value, and culture. Also: What perfume could be finer than the aroma of our pineapple jam?—Through the glass door I see the nice slim face of a typist with straight black hair, typing at a good pace and making a rather good impression on me.—I smile the whole time, two hours, four hours, six hours.

April 22. This is a splendid job. They’ve paid me my first weekly wages, forty dollars. I think that, given my preposterous work, I am the best-paid guy on the planet.—Mister Gridgeman hasn’t said a word to me yet about the whys and wherefores. My curiosity dies down. I have thought through all the possibilities and didn’t come up with much. Mister Gridgeman is just a harmless madman, and I don’t have the guts to ask a madman questions. Incidentally, Mister Gridgeman is very kind to me. I smoke his cigars and chew his gum. When he’s dictating business letters to the nice typist—her name is Bessie—he gives me a friendly nod. During his long-distance telephone calls to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Denver, and to the plantations in Alabama and South Carolina, he returns my smile. And when businesspeople come, he introduces me to them as a friend. He provides price quotes, talks about the new harvest and about his superb grapefruits, and receives orders for his marmalade by the truckload. But not for a second does he look away from my eyes and my lips, which are frozen in an everlasting smile.

May 4. Everything is going along swimmingly. I got bad news from Jefferson City: my in-laws’ farm was severely affected by the catastrophic flooding of the Mississippi. But that won’t stop me from keeping a smile on my face.

May 7. Mister Gridgeman seems to be quite satisfied with me. His hard-as-steel hand claps me on the shoulder more and more often; I already have a good dozen black-and-blue marks. Every day I am served ice cream at midday. My wages have been raised to fifty dollars. On Sunday, Bessie and I will go to a baseball game.

May 17. I’m feeling quite glum; Bessie has suddenly gotten engaged to an underwear manufacturer in the Bronx. What should I do? I have to smile. Maybe this’ll do the trick: I’ve subscribed to satirical magazines, Life, Punch, the New Yorker, and the Judge. But I think that’s the wrong way to go about it. I’d rather read the political section of the daily newspapers.

May 31. Gridgeman has sealed a very big deal. He bursts into loud laughter, comes up to me, and hits me on the shoulder so hard that I sink to my knees. “Well, now! You are a great guy; you got me customers for my entire inventory of marmalade, and I bet that 80 percent of it was moldy. It was a fine idea to hire you. Ah, you don’t even know yet what I need you for. You are my lucky charm. I have to have an optimist around me, a fat guy who is always laughing and reflects