The Multitudes, Multitudes Manuscript

The Multitudes, Multitudes Manuscript is Tom Keefer’s unfinished novel and a recurring measure of how literary ambition shapes his standing aboard the Caine. At the celebration after Steve Maryk’s trial, the book appears as a conspicuous confection and a promise of future success; later, its damp, incomplete pages pass into Willie Keith’s hands. Barney Greenwald’s bitter toast and Keith’s subsequent reading give the manuscript two sharply different contexts: first, as the emblem of Keefer’s apparent triumph, and then as an actual work whose craft Keith can assess.

A Novel Made Into a Centerpiece

At the dinner, a large cake iced in green and shaped like a book dominates the table. Its title and author are rendered in thick yellow sugar: The Multitudes, Multitudes Manuscript, by Tom Keefer. Ferns and roses surround it, while flowers, candles, silver, champagne bottles, and foil crowd the table. The novel is not merely mentioned at this gathering; its title and authorship are made into the most prominent decoration, turning Keefer’s literary identity into a public spectacle.

The festive setting is already unstable. At seven o’clock, the chair at the head of the table remains empty and dinner has not been served, while the officers are drunk and the jokes about Philip Francis Queeg continue. Steve Maryk’s parents smile uneasily and follow their son’s lead in laughing. New officers who never knew Queeg listen with uncertainty and drink Keefer’s champagne. Against that scene, the book-shaped cake registers the occasion’s declared purpose—celebrating the author—but also its dependence on a group performance of triumph. Keefer’s work is on display before its contents are, and its grand edible likeness is surrounded by a celebration whose meaning Barney Greenwald will openly contest.

The Manuscript and Keefer’s Trial Conduct

Greenwald’s toast redirects attention from the novel’s celebration to the unresolved moral and professional consequences of Maryk’s acquittal. He tells Maryk that he considers him only half acquitted and expects that the reviewing authorities may regard the verdict as a miscarriage of justice, with a reprimand affecting Maryk’s promotion prospects. Greenwald describes his own defense as relying on legal tactics, making Queeg and a psychiatrist look ridiculous, and appealing to institutional pride. In his account, the testimony of the Caine’s favorite author came close to defeating the defense.

That author is Keefer, whose authorship connects the manuscript to the trial without making the novel itself evidence of what happened aboard ship. Greenwald argues that Keefer could have supported Maryk and Willie Keith openly, including by stating his view of Queeg’s dangerousness. Instead, Greenwald says, bringing Keefer into the defense would have made matters worse, and he let Keefer remain outside it. The toast’s imagined future for Keefer is pointedly extravagant: he will command the Caine, collect favorable fitness reports, publish a novel demonstrating that the Navy stinks, earn a fortune, and marry Hedy Lamarr. Greenwald’s forecast makes the book’s public promise inseparable from his accusation that Keefer has escaped consequences that Maryk will bear.

A Physical, Incomplete Work

Later, Keefer offers Keith a thick black binder containing the first twenty chapters. The remainder is damp. Keith accepts with evident surprise, saying that he had begun to think he would have to buy a copy to read it; Keefer responds that Keith should still expect to pay royalties and asks for his opinion. Their exchange gives the novel a less ceremonial form than the cake: not a finished publication, but a substantial yet incomplete manuscript whose surviving pages can be read and judged.

The binder also marks a change in Keefer’s position as an author. In a later account, Keith says that Keefer had finally shown him part of the novel and sold the incomplete manuscript to Chapman House for a thousand-dollar advance. The account links that sale to the dinner held to celebrate it, while describing the dinner as having become a troubling affair. The work is therefore commercially promising before it is complete. Keefer has secured an advance, but the novel’s material condition—twenty chapters available, the rest damp—keeps that success visibly provisional.

Keith’s Reading and the Novel’s Place in the Story

Keith’s later assessment is mixed rather than dismissive. He finds little originality in the book’s thought or style and describes its manner as a mixture of Dos Passos, Joyce, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Yet he also judges it smooth, with some brilliant scenes, and predicts that it will sell very well. The novel is set on a carrier and uses flashbacks to the beach. These details establish both a military setting and a structure that moves away from the immediate shipboard present, though the evidence does not provide enough of the manuscript’s contents to specify its plot or argument.

The contrast between Greenwald’s toast and Keith’s reading gives the object its larger significance. Greenwald treats the projected novel as part of a future in which Keefer profits from exposing the Navy while avoiding the personal cost of the trial; Keith, reading the available chapters, recognizes real skill as well as borrowed literary manner. Neither view cancels the other. The binder is at once a commodity with an advance behind it, an unfinished work awaiting judgment, and the emblem around which the Caine officers stage a celebration whose easy account of victory Greenwald refuses to accept.