I'm the oldest motion picture writer in the business. I am endlessly grateful to the movies, and I'll tell you why. Because a writer can always make a living writing for the movies when he hasn't anything to say. If it hadn't been for the movies, I would have had to turn out novels when I had nothing to say... You can do a good job on other people's material... The movies help writers over their bad periods.〔
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From the casual talk, he went on to a point that one heard raised a good deal. The question of Mr. Chambers' memory. He remembered so many things and he had failed to remember a number of other things.
"That's always baffled me," he said In a slow and measured tempo. "There doesn't seem to be any consistency in the importance of what is remembered. One recalls a shadow on a wall, a gesture, something of no great importance, remembers it for years--and then forgets some extremely important fact like the address of one of the underground photographic laboratories. I suppose only a student of memory could give you the answer and then I wouldn't be particularly impressed. Memory is like a hot coal-it fades and grows bright again and fades."〔
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That week Thomas called an old friend and said: "I'm tired of all the goddam writers around here. Why don't you give me a party with no writers, only beautiful women?" Late that Saturday night, after the party, Thomas showed up at his favorite tavern, the White Horse, a dark-paneled, homey bar on the western outskirts of Greenwich Village. His eyes were glazed, bloodshot, heavy-lidded. Some pals bought him drinks, and he downed three or four boilermakers in 15 minutes. Later, he went on to another bar, then retired to his hotel room for a warm beer and whisky nightcap with a friend. Three days and several parties later, New York Times Critic Harvey Breit telephoned him at his hotel. "He seemed bad," Breit recalls. "I wanted to say, 'You sound as though from the tomb.' I didn't.〔
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