I went home with my book lists and the following morning was busy writing letters, opening accounts, and beginning the formation of one of the finest libraries of psychiatric books ever gathered in a single bookstore.
With Lionel Blitzsten’s help, I prepared the first psychiatric book catalogue to come out of Chicago and mailed it to every psychiatrist in the United States, to every university library and institute for psychoanalysis, and to selected prospects in Canada, Brazil, Germany, even Africa. Because of Dr. Blitzsten’s extraordinary editing, the catalogue featured books not readily obtained in America. I became an active importer of English titles, especially from the Hogarth Press, which had an outstanding listing of psychoanalytic books.
A few months later, I added a supplement to the original catalogue, including books on psychology, philosophy, anthropology, art and literature. I had quickly discovered that psychoanalysts were deeply interested in the impact of all areas of thought upon man’s inner experience and his spiritual life. Soon ninety percent of my business was coming from my new specialty, which continued to thrive in spite of growing competition from New York involving price-cutting which the publishers appeared powerless to prevent. The local psychoanalysts were my best accounts, and many of them, including Bob Kohrman, Harvey Lewis, Fred Robbins, Richard Renneker, Aaron Hilkevitch, Jack Sparer, Joel Handler, Stan Gamm, Ernest Rappaport and Robert Gronner, along with Katie Dobson, the obstetrician, and Harold Laufman, the surgeon, became torch bearers for the Seven Stairs and lasting friends.
Even less expected than this boom in my business was the social consequence of my deepening relationship with Lionel Blitzsten. The last thing I would ever have conceived, the last for which I would have hoped, as a consequence of my career as a personal bookseller, was an induction into the Proustian world of the coterie.
The machinery of a coterie is simple; the reasons behind its operation and its subtle influence on the lives of those drawn into its orbit are complex almost beyond endurance. Essentially, the coterie consists of a number of people who hold similar[similar] views on unimportant things. Everyone admitted must observe a cardinal prohibition: to say nothing fundamental about anything. All must follow the leader, employ a common stock of expressions, adopt the same mannerisms, profess the same prejudices, affect the same bearing, and recognize a common bond of impenetrable superficiality.
It was all to be seen from the first, although I would not permit my heart to acknowledge it. We were there for the entertainment of a sick, lonely, gifted man. Sitting up in his huge bed, Lionel held forth on every subject imaginable that related to human creativity. He talked brilliantly, fluidly, endlessly, while his auditors listened, sipped tea or coffee or a liqueur, bit into a cracker or sandwich, laughed or smiled when signaled to do so, or scowled when necessary.
The strange thing was that so many were envious and wanted desperately to belong. But the number had to be limited. Lionel did the choosing and he did the eliminating (eventually, in fact, he discarded all but one!) He used people as a machine uses oil. When a person ceased to give what he needed or showed signs of drying up, the search began for his replacement. For Lionel required constant stimulation to avoid falling into melancholy. The dinner parties and soirees to which he was addicted were at once indispensable and boring to him, tonic and yet destructive. The web of his character and his professional and social commitments was so complex that it became virtually impossible for him to find a situation of free and natural rapport or one with which he could deal in any way except capriciously. Hence his total need for the “faithful.” Hence, too, if one of the “faithful” became[became] valueless, out he went. Then began the cries and recriminations and the storm of hysteria reigned supreme in the tea cup.
One could not remain a passive spectator in this little world. If you can imagine a great hall with many rooms occupied by solitary persons somehow bound to one another by invisible, inextricable longings, with myself dashing, hopping, skipping, running from one room to another, you may have a sense of the nightmare my life was becoming—a fantasy in which some incomprehensible crisis was always arising or in which my business or personal life might be interrupted at any hour of the day or night by a call from Lionel and the despotism of his utter and absolute need.
In my heart, I knew that my dream of being the Shelley of the book business was rapidly disappearing. The act of dressing for an evening of looking at the same well-cared-for, well-groomed, vacuous people, eating the same tired hors d’oeuvres, hearing the same gossip, filled me with almost uncontrollable rage. Yet I was still caught up in the excitement of being part of this new-found pretentious world of middle-class wealth.
The first time I was really shaken was at the Christmas party. Along with others, I had helped trim the gigantic tree while Lionel sat and amused us with tales and gossip. The decorating job was truly a work of art and we were all quite pleased with ourselves when we left, the members of the inner circle lingering for a few minutes after the others were gone before offering their thanks and goodnights. We were saying our goodbyes, when Lionel turned suddenly and looked at the pillows on his huge couch.