:47:01
But they could be worse. After all,
you're not an embezzler or a murderer.
:47:04
You drink too much and that's not fatal.
:47:06
One cure didn't take. There are others.
:47:08
Of course there are.
:47:09
This has a familiar ring.
:47:12
But, there must be a reason why you drink Don.
The right doctor could find it.
:47:15
Look, I'm way ahead of the right doctor.
:47:18
I know the reason. The reason is me. What I am.
:47:20
Or, rather, what I'm not.
What I wanted to become and didn't.
:47:24
What is it you want to be so much that you're not?
:47:28
A writer.
:47:30
Silly, isn't it?
:47:35
You know, in college I passed for a genius.
:47:37
They couldn't get out the college magazine
without one of my stories.
:47:41
Boy, was I hot, Hemingway stuff.
:47:44
I reached my peak when I was nineteen.
:47:46
Sold a piece to the Atlantic Monthly.
Reprinted in the Readers' Digest.
:47:50
Who wants to stay in college when he's Hemingway?
:47:53
My mother bought me a brand new typewriter, and...
:47:57
I moved right in on New York.
:47:59
Well, the first thing I wrote, that didn't quite come off.
:48:03
And the second, I dropped.
The public wasn't ready for that one.
:48:06
I started a third and a fourth...
:48:10
only by then, somebody began to look over
y shoulder and whisper...
:48:16
in a thin, clear voice like the E-string on a violin.
:48:20
Don Birnam, he'd whisper...
:48:22
it's not good enough. Not that way.
:48:28
How about a couple of drinks just to set it on its feet, huh?
:48:33
So I had a couple. Oh, what a great idea that was.
:48:36
That made all the difference.
Suddenly I could see the whole thing...
:48:40
the tragic sweep of the great novel, beautifully proportioned.
:48:43
But before I could really grab it
and throw it down on paper...
:48:46
the drinks would wear off
and everything would be gone, like a mirage.
:48:50
Then there was despair, and...
a drink to counterbalance despair,
:48:54
and one to counterbalance the counterbalance.
:48:58
And I'd sit in front of that typewriter,