Arthur Raymond
A friend who cannot end an argument without wrestling the other man to the floor, and who is delighted the night someone finally beats him.
The book
At a glance
- A friend from before the marriage, and a regular at the couple's speakeasy
- The painter Spud Jason and Jason's partner Alameda
- He avoids fistfights because he cannot afford to damage them
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeArthur Raymond is a character in Plexus, the 1953 novel by the American writer Henry Miller. Plexus is the middle book of a three-part autobiographical novel called The Rosy Crucifixion, narrated by Miller under the name Val and set in New York in the middle 1920s.
He is a friend from before the marriage and one of the two people Val and Mona moved across Brooklyn to avoid. He appears in a handful of scenes and dominates every one of them, mostly by starting a fight. Miller renamed the people in his books; this profile describes the character as Plexus draws him, from the Grove Weidenfeld printing, read in the Internet Archive's scan.
How the book draws them
- One of the people they moved to escapeWhen the couple take the Brooklyn Heights flat, the intention is a clean break from everyone they know. Val names two of them: Kronski and Arthur Raymond.
- Arguments that finish on the floorOnce he starts coming to the speakeasy regularly, things get dramatic. He liked nothing better than to argue, and to finish the argument on the floor with toe holds and arm locks; nothing pleased him more than twisting somebody's arm nearly out of its socket. His idol was a wrestler who had turned professional — partly, Val suspects, because the man had once studied to be an organist.
- The ping-pong tournamentsOn slow nights the customers are pushed out early, the tables are put together and the company plays ping-pong until daybreak, with cold food and whatever drink is left. The championship matches are usually Arthur Raymond against Val, and the scores run absurdly high. Val generally throws the game, because Raymond is such a bad loser.
- The apology he extractedOne night he decides a young customer named Duffy has insulted Mona, and insists on a public apology. Duffy treats it as a joke. Raymond gets up, twists his arm, throws him down, sits on his chest and bangs his head against the floor asking whether he will or he won't, until Duffy mumbles something and is lifted to his feet. The room goes completely silent. Duffy pays his bill and leaves without a word, and Raymond sits alone with his head down and then walks out.
- The two black eyes he was proud ofDuffy had waited outside for him. Raymond turns up a few nights later beaten up and, oddly, delighted — the two of them had become friends afterwards. He explained that he is always at a disadvantage with fists because he cannot afford to damage his hands, said it was the first beating of his life and that it had given him a thrill, and finished by remarking that everybody seemed happy about it and that perhaps he had deserved it.