Black Oxen

"Talk. Talk. Talk.... Good lines and no action ... said all ... not even promising first act ... eighth failure and season more than half over ... rather be a playwright and fail than a critic compelled to listen to has-beens and would-bes trying to put over bad plays.... Oh, for just one more great first-night ... if there's a spirit world why don't the ghosts of dead artists get together and inhibit bad playwrights from tormenting first-nighters?... Astral board of Immortals sitting in Unconscious tweaking strings until gobbets and sclerotics become gibbering idiots every time they put pen to paper?... Fewer first-nights but more joy ... also joy of sending producers back to cigar stands.... Thank God, no longer a critic ... don't need to come to first-nights unless I want ... can't keep away ... habit too strong ... poor devil of a colyumist must forage ... why did I become a columnist? More money. Money! And I once a rubescent socialist ... best parlor type ... Lord! I wish some one would die and leave me a million!"Clavering opened his weary eyes and glanced over the darkened auditorium, visualizing a mass of bored resentful disks: a few hopeful, perhaps, the greater number too educated in the theatre not to have recognized the heavy note of incompetence that had boomed like a muffled fog-horn since the rise of the curtain.