Circe Berman and Paul Slazinger

Circe Berman and Paul Slazinger’s relationship is built on a concealed identity and a reversal of literary authority: Slazinger initially treats Berman as an amateur, unaware that she is Polly Madison, a remarkably successful novelist whose work he has already admired. Once the truth emerges, his condescension becomes humiliation, and his resentment briefly turns into sabotage; yet his belated enthusiasm for her books shows that the conflict is not simply between an accomplished writer and an impostor, but between genuine admiration and a professional vanity he cannot easily relinquish.

Their First Meeting

Slazinger asks what has brought Berman to the Hamptons, where she appears to know no one. She says she has come for peace and quiet, intending to give her full attention to a biography of her late husband, a Baltimore brain surgeon. The account casts her as a newcomer and an aspiring writer, and Slazinger accepts that framing. He has published eleven novels and assumes the authority of an established professional, patronizing her as an amateur.

Their exchange quickly makes that supposed difference in experience a contest. Slazinger says that everyone thinks he or she can write, then insists that writing is difficult if taken seriously. Berman counters that the difficulty may come from having nothing to say: command of sentences and a dictionary cannot substitute for something a writer knows or cares about. The exchange reveals a sharpness and confidence that do not fit Slazinger’s easy dismissal, although he continues to treat her as a novice.

Slazinger tries to answer her with a line borrowed from Truman Capote, distinguishing writing from mere typing. Berman identifies the source at once. He covers the borrowed remark with a knowing response, while she tells him that, were it not for his kind face, she might suspect him of making fun of her. Their conversation leaves the power balance unsettled: Slazinger performs the role of the seasoned writer, but Berman shows that she can recognize both literary pretension and the words used to disguise it.

The Secret Behind the Amateur

Berman’s account of her purpose is a cover. She later tells the narrator that she is not an amateur working on a biography at all. She has come to research and write a novel about working-class adolescents in a summer resort community crowded with the children of multimillionaires. The revelation changes the meaning of her first conversation with Slazinger: he has been judging her on an identity she deliberately invented, while she has allowed him to display his professional airs without knowing whom he is addressing.

Nor is she embarking on a first book. Berman has written twenty novels for young readers under the name Polly Madison. The series is shockingly frank and enormously popular; several books have been adapted for motion pictures. Her concealment therefore is not merely a matter of withholding a credential. Slazinger sees a supposed beginner when he is speaking to a prolific author whose readership and commercial success far exceed what his assumptions about her suggest.

The account also reaches the reader through a delay in the narrator’s telling. The dinner conversation happened two weeks earlier, while the narrator says he learned Berman’s real identity only at breakfast that morning, after she swore him to secrecy. This staged disclosure makes the reader share, temporarily, the false understanding under which Slazinger had been speaking. The narrator’s additional decision to keep the secret for fear of what the revelation might do to Slazinger gives the comedy a darker undertone: his concern connects the shock of humiliation to the suicide of Terry Kitchen, another person he describes as a best friend.

Discovery and Retaliation

Slazinger eventually learns the truth from Berman herself. Later, addressing the narrator, he angrily asks why he was not told that she was Polly Madison. He explains that he recognized what she was doing at the house and begged her not to proceed, fearing that it might kill the narrator; Berman, he says, believed it would make him ten years younger. In the same conversation, Slazinger insists that he is the narrator’s enemy. His response makes clear that the secret has become not just a question of Berman’s identity but a grievance about being kept outside the truth.

The immediate quarrel involves wallpaper she is using in the foyer renovation. Slazinger gathers up as many rolls as he can, runs into the kitchen, and hides them in the deep freeze. The gesture is his self-appointed proof of friendship toward the narrator, but it also places him directly in conflict with Berman, who comes after him demanding to know what he has done with the wallpaper. The domestic renovation becomes the setting for the exposure of his wounded pride: he has moved from lecturing Berman about writing to physically trying to frustrate her work.

Berman calls him a freeloader and the spit-filled penny whistle of American literature. When Slazinger challenges her authority to talk about literature, she finally identifies herself. She boasts that her novels sold seven million copies in the United States alone the previous year, that two are then being made into major motion pictures, and that a film of another had won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Score. She demands her wallpaper back and threatens to break his arms. The force of the revelation lies in its precise reversal: the woman he had instructed as a beginner can answer his claims with a record of extraordinary readership and screen success.

Admiration Beneath the Antagonism

The revelation does not leave Slazinger free to dismiss Berman’s work. Celeste has all the Polly Madison books, and Slazinger has read them. He admits that throughout the summer he was admiring them while treating their author as a half-wit, unaware that the woman before him was the writer behind the books. His embarrassment comes from the collision of two judgments he had kept apart: his critical response to the novels was sincere, but his condescension toward Berman was based on a false impression he had accepted without question.

Slazinger calls Berman a monster while praising her books as marvelous, comparing her to Richard Wagner, whom he describes as one of the most awful people ever to live. The contradiction is part of his reaction rather than a resolution of it. He can acknowledge the quality of her work and still turn the encounter into a grievance, especially against the narrator for letting him make a fool of himself by offering her tips on the writing game.

After learning who she is, Slazinger becomes more enthusiastic than Berman about redoing the foyer. He proposes painting its woodwork babyshit brown if she really wants to make the narrator happy. This renewed participation is not a return to the easy companionship implied by his earlier claim of friendship. Instead, the friendship passes through concealment, exposure, and retaliation, with the renovation providing a continuing arena in which Slazinger can express both his loyalty to the narrator and his hostility toward Berman. His change of attitude does not erase the original condescension; it makes that condescension harder to excuse, because his own reading had already taught him that her books were worth admiring.