Part 2 (1/2)

”A verbal bully,” Peter Barthelme once called his dad-and as the oldest child, Don caught the brunt of the attacks.

In his early adolescence, Don developed an uncontrollable twitch in his upper lip. The malady would strike him randomly, causing him tremendous embarra.s.sment, particularly since the ability to put things into words, and to speak clearly, was valued so highly in the Barthelme home. The twitch disappeared only after Don underwent a series of medical tests, including apt.i.tude and psychological profiles. As he recalled later, doctors told his parents he was a verbal genius and they should ”let him be.”

The narrator of ”See the Moon?” tells his son, who remembers taking a lot of pills as a kid, ”You had some kind of a nervous disorder, for a while....We never found out what it was. It went away....Your mouth trembled....You couldn't control it.” It was ”nothing so fancy” as epilepsy, he says.

Shortly after the twitch disappeared, Don willed himself into becoming a superb public speaker. He would ”distance” himself from his listeners ”with a formal, slightly autocratic manner and [he'd] shape...his lips to p.r.o.nounce each word with great care,” says Helen Moore, the woman who would become his second wife. It's possible that at some point Don took speech lessons.

The ”slightly autocratic manner” he developed could make him seem arrogant to people who didn't know him well. As a teenager, he wouldn't tolerate phoniness. In this, he followed his father. Joe Maranto, a pal in later years, said that Don was ”fully formed” very early, ”precocious, but rare in that he was sort of born with a vision and a gift; like some people can play basketball, he had that unique ability to [write]. Don did not have to work hard learning it; he worked hard at what he did.”

His writing was so good that, in his junior year at St. Thomas, one of his teachers accused him of plagiarism. The papers he turned in were too accomplished for a high school boy, said his instructor, a stern and stubborn priest. This incident was a factor in Don's break with Catholic schooling.

4.

HIGH AND LOW.

”[My father] gave me, when I was fourteen or fifteen, a copy of Marcel Raymond's From Baudelaire to Surrealism From Baudelaire to Surrealism,” Don told an interviewer for The Paris Review The Paris Review. Raymond's volume didn't appear in English until 1950, so Don's memory was running ahead of itself here. He couldn't have read the book until he was nineteen-and fighting fiercely with his father.

In the meantime, the curriculum at St. Thomas Catholic High School required him to study Thomas Aquinas and Dante, whose philosophies and writings would echo throughout his work. For example, in the eighteenth canto of Dante's Paradiso Paradiso, the souls of just and temperate rulers arrange themselves as lights in the air above Jupiter to spell the words DILIGITE IUSt.i.tIAM QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM DILIGITE IUSt.i.tIAM QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM, meaning ”Love righteousness, ye that are judges of the earth.” Dante wrote, ”In five times seven vowels and consonants / they showed themselves, and I grasped every part / as if those lights had given it utterance.”

Contemporary readers-accustomed to billboards, marquees, electronics, computer graphics, and special effects in the movies-have little trouble imagining such a scene, but in the early fourteenth century, this was a remarkable image, almost an ”anti-image,” says the distinguished Dante scholar John Frecerro. It is a representation of a representation, ”leading nowhere beyond itself.”

Frecerro's description antic.i.p.ates literary postmodernism, and dovetails with some of Don's mature interests. In an unt.i.tled interchapter in his 1983 collection, Overnight to Many Distant Cities Overnight to Many Distant Cities, Don imagines a utopian metropolis whose form, when seen from the air, spells the word FASTIGIUM FASTIGIUM, not the ”name of the city,” the narrator tells us, ”simply a set of letters selected for the elegance of the script.” A fastigium is the apex of a structure; it is also an infinite sequence-in language, a list progressing alphabetically, letter by letter: absentees, absenting, absolutes, absolving absentees, absenting, absolutes, absolving, and so on. World without end. If Don's city is not the Empyrean, it is nevertheless a slice of eternity, a place, we're told, where a ”girl dead behind...rosebushes” can come back to life, much as Beatrice's soul will live forever among the petals of the Mystic Rose in Paradise.

Paradiso was one of Western literature's earliest attempts to ”represent that which is...beyond representation,” Frecerro says. Given this, Dante is a natural literary father for Don, who always told his students, ”What we are after is the unsayable.” In 1986, just three years after imagining FASTIGIUM, he published a novel called was one of Western literature's earliest attempts to ”represent that which is...beyond representation,” Frecerro says. Given this, Dante is a natural literary father for Don, who always told his students, ”What we are after is the unsayable.” In 1986, just three years after imagining FASTIGIUM, he published a novel called Paradise Paradise.

Thomas Aquinas also whispers in Don's sentences, in Don's obsession with possibility. In the Summa Summa, Aquinas defines G.o.d as pure actuality, manifested only in acts, without potentiality. Don turns this equation around and meditates on shouldness shouldness (what should be, rather than what exists in the world). (what should be, rather than what exists in the world).

On December 6, 1273, a few months before his death, Aquinas reportedly dropped his pen and vowed not to write again. ”I can do no more,” he said. ”Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value.” One of Don's last characters, a writer on the island of St. Thomas, says, ”I don't know what value to place on what I've done, perhaps none at all is right.”

Like millions of Catholic boys in the 1940s, Don carried a little green book around school: the Baltimore Catechism Baltimore Catechism, a manual of Catholic teaching first published in 1885, which contained hundreds of questions and answers. The bishops of America had compiled this English version of the Roman Catechism Roman Catechism, written in Latin in the sixteenth century, in Baltimore in 1885. In subsequent editions, the Baltimore Catechism Baltimore Catechism grew fatter and contained many more questions. grew fatter and contained many more questions.

The Q & A form is traditional for philosophical investigation, but Don's deepest acquaintance with it would certainly have been through the Baltimore Catechism Baltimore Catechism. It ”is to be hoped” that the format will ”be read with more pleasure” than a book of dry instructions, wrote the Reverend Thomas L. Kinkead in his 1891 preface to An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism.

Q. What is man? A. A. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of G.o.d. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of G.o.d. Q. Why do many marriages prove unhappy? A. A. Many marriages prove unhappy because they are entered into hastily and without worthy motives. Many marriages prove unhappy because they are entered into hastily and without worthy motives.

The Explanation Explanation addressed these and other questions. It argued that ”much time is wasted” in schools. ”Many teachers do little more than mark the attendance...and the children have no interest in the study.” Young minds need to know that the ”truths of their Catechism are constantly coming up in the performance of their everyday duties.” addressed these and other questions. It argued that ”much time is wasted” in schools. ”Many teachers do little more than mark the attendance...and the children have no interest in the study.” Young minds need to know that the ”truths of their Catechism are constantly coming up in the performance of their everyday duties.”

To a wry sensibility like Don's, the simplistic logic and awkward wording of the explanations were an endless source of mirth. For example, one ”explanation”-a gloss on the phrase ”To know,” as in ”To know G.o.d”-begins: ”A poor savage in Africa never longs to be at a game or contest going on in America because he does not know it and therefore cannot love it.” Don could not resist mocking such language, both as a schoolboy and later as a mature writer. The Q & A format would become one of his signature styles, in stories like ”The Explanation,” ”Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel,” ”Basil from Her Garden,” and others.

After a day of cla.s.ses at the high school, Don read his father's magazines at home-the architectural journals and design catalogs as well as The New Yorker The New Yorker. Founded as a humor magazine just six years before Don was born, The New Yorker The New Yorker became a major literary showcase. In became a major literary showcase. In About Town About Town, a history of the publication, Ben YaG.o.da quotes book critic John Leonard: The New Yorker The New Yorker was the ”weekly magazine most educated Americans grew up on” (Leonard is roughly contemporary with Don). ”Whether we read it or refused to read it-which depended, of course, on the sort of people we wanted to be-it was as much a part of our cla.s.s conditioning as clean fingernails, college, a checking account, and good intentions. For better or worse, it probably created our sense of humor.” YaG.o.da adds that the magazine created ” 'our' sense of what was proper English prose and what was not, what was in good taste and what was not, what was the appropriate att.i.tude to take, in print, toward personal and global happenings.” was the ”weekly magazine most educated Americans grew up on” (Leonard is roughly contemporary with Don). ”Whether we read it or refused to read it-which depended, of course, on the sort of people we wanted to be-it was as much a part of our cla.s.s conditioning as clean fingernails, college, a checking account, and good intentions. For better or worse, it probably created our sense of humor.” YaG.o.da adds that the magazine created ” 'our' sense of what was proper English prose and what was not, what was in good taste and what was not, what was the appropriate att.i.tude to take, in print, toward personal and global happenings.”

In the mid-1940s, when Don began reading The New Yorker The New Yorker, Howard Brubaker ran a column in it called ”Of All Things,” featuring quick, light-hearted satire of world events, like this quip from May 1, 1943: ”Sweden announces that German wars.h.i.+ps found violating her waters will be fired upon. This is in accord with the well-known Swedish doctrine, 'I want to be alone.' ” Or this: ”Meat and poultry are again scarce in the New York area. Some of our citizens have practically nothing for dinner now but interesting conversation.” The clever tone-distanced, charmingly snide-the wordplay, the mixture of public and private registers, and, above all, the swift pacing had natural appeal for an adolescent. Brubaker's jokes were verbal equivalents of New Yorker New Yorker cartoons, another attraction for a smart young reader. The cartoons delivered fast punch lines and absurd imagery, as well as cultural comment. cartoons, another attraction for a smart young reader. The cartoons delivered fast punch lines and absurd imagery, as well as cultural comment.

Early threads of Don's style appear in James Thurber's contributions to the magazine during this period. Often, it's not clear whether Thurber was writing fiction or nonfiction; if he was mounting a parody, and if so, of what. In a piece called ”1776-And All That,” his narrator begins: ”Everybody must know by this time that the freshmen in our colleges and universities do not know anything about the history or geography of the United States.” From this doc.u.mentary premise, Thurber moved swiftly into a fantasy about how people learned of the students' shocking ignorance: ”It all began when the publisher of the Times Times, in a depressed mood, scribbled a memo to his editors. 'Have idea n.o.body knows anything. Find out.' The well-oiled machinery of the great newspaper began to move.” From here, Thurber's narrator becomes an active character, designing educational aids. He proposes a ”new kind of map of the United States...the exact shape and size of a goldfish. When the student [opens] his geography, the map [will] pop up. The textbook...[will] also...contain pop-ups of the Presidents.” Eventually, the narrator abandons his idea: College freshmen will not ”be interested in the Presidents even if they did pop up.” The piece-idea-driven-never takes off as a story; its imaginative flights never rise very high. It appears to want to satirize something-but what? College students? Newspaper publishers? Textbook makers? In fact, the first sentence is just a convenient wedge, prying open the floodgates to a torrent of absurd observations, situations, and details.

Compare this to Don's ”Swallowing,” first published on the op-ed page of The New York Times The New York Times on November 4, 1972, and reprinted in Don's nonfiction book, on November 4, 1972, and reprinted in Don's nonfiction book, Guilty Pleasures Guilty Pleasures. It begins: The American people have swallowed a lot in the last four years. A lot of swallowing has been done. We have swallowed electric bugs, laundered money, quite a handsome amount of grain moving about in mysterious ways, a war more shameful than can be imagined, much else. There are even people who believe that the President does not invariably tell us the truth about himself or ourselves-he tells us something something, we swallow that.

The piece then swerves into a riotous fantasy, in no sense nonfiction (nor is it recognizably an editorial on presidential policies): ”In the history of swallowing, the disposition of the enormous cheese-six feet thick, twenty feet in diameter, four thousand pounds-which had been Wisconsin's princ.i.p.al contribution to the New York World's Fair of 196465, is perhaps instructive.” Like Howard Brubaker preparing a punch line, Don twisted the word swallowing swallowing from its metaphoric to its literal meaning; then, like Thurber, he s.h.i.+fted tone, from essay into story. After an elaborate string of events, a poet, ”starving as all poets are,” eats the giant cheese. Later, ”his best-known” poem is ” from its metaphoric to its literal meaning; then, like Thurber, he s.h.i.+fted tone, from essay into story. After an elaborate string of events, a poet, ”starving as all poets are,” eats the giant cheese. Later, ”his best-known” poem is ”I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing” a line in a popular antacid commercial in the early 1970s.

Don concludes: ”The American people have swallowed quite a lot in the last four years, but as the poet cited goes on to say, there are remedies.”

A comment on the Nixon administration? A fairy tale? A parody of world's fairs, poets, TV commercials? A fable on the transformative power of art? Though built around a more extreme premise than ”1776-And All That,” ”Swallowing” lifts its moves from Thurber.

YaG.o.da says that the ”little man” is ”Thurber's contribution to The New Yorker The New Yorker and to American literature.” The prime example is the beleaguered and hapless middle-cla.s.s hero of ”The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1939). With an almost throwaway line-Mitty experiences a ”distressing scene with his wife”-Thurber began an ”exhaustive, merciless, and meticulous three-decade chronicle of the war between men and women, especially between husbands and wives.” YaG.o.da says that Thurber's ”little man” blazed the trail for John Updike's suburban wanderers, and prefigured Don's work by ”matter-of-factly positing an absurd but resonant premise and doggedly pursuing its logical consequences. It is a Kafka sort of method, and it can be seen as representing and to American literature.” The prime example is the beleaguered and hapless middle-cla.s.s hero of ”The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1939). With an almost throwaway line-Mitty experiences a ”distressing scene with his wife”-Thurber began an ”exhaustive, merciless, and meticulous three-decade chronicle of the war between men and women, especially between husbands and wives.” YaG.o.da says that Thurber's ”little man” blazed the trail for John Updike's suburban wanderers, and prefigured Don's work by ”matter-of-factly positing an absurd but resonant premise and doggedly pursuing its logical consequences. It is a Kafka sort of method, and it can be seen as representing The New Yorker The New Yorker's first brush with literary modernism of any kind.”

In many of the magazine's unsigned ”Talk of the Town” pieces (most of them written by E. B. White), the ”little man” was abstracted into an anonymous speaker, a faceless ”we,” floating from scene to scene, making ironic comment. A column from April 13, 1946, begins: ”A man must have some reading matter with him in the subway.” Our man has brought with him Article 28 of the UN Charter. He (”we”) is headed for a ”crisis meeting of the Council, scheduled for eleven.” The commentator then notes: ”It struck us, as we put our nickel in, that no crisis worthy of the name can possibly occur at exactly eleven o'clock in the morning, crises, real ones, must occur earlier than eleven (say at 7:20, before a nation has shaved).”

The incongruities, s.h.i.+fting perceptions, and leaps of illogic were tricks that Don would master. He'd pick up the timing, too, in the comic precision of oddly qualified phrases like ”crises, real ones.”

In the 1940s, Edmund Wilson was a regular book reviewer for The New Yorker The New Yorker, tackling popular and serious literature, the high and the low, in a conversational mode that made book discussions sound as natural as talk about the weather. Of one well-known novel, Wilson said, ”I hope I am not being stupid about this book, which has left me feeling rather cheated.” His bluntness and pa.s.sion, offered casually, provided an effective, enticing model for a budding young intellectual.

But of all the New Yorker New Yorker writing that Don devoured as a teenager, none entered his bones as deeply as S. J. Perelman's work. A high school pal, Pat Goeters, recalled that Perelman was the ”first writer Don imitated.” For this reason, Goeters felt Don would never make a splash-he was more interested in ”humorists” than in ”serious writers and great ideas.” writing that Don devoured as a teenager, none entered his bones as deeply as S. J. Perelman's work. A high school pal, Pat Goeters, recalled that Perelman was the ”first writer Don imitated.” For this reason, Goeters felt Don would never make a splash-he was more interested in ”humorists” than in ”serious writers and great ideas.”

”Perelman...could do...amazing things in prose,” Don told Larry Mc-Caffery in a 1980 interview. ”[He] was the first true American surrealist-of a rank in the world surrealist movement with the best.”

The New Yorker didn't cotton to Perelman at first. Harold Ross found his writing ”dizzy,” attempting to ”burlesque too many things at once.” In a rejection letter written in 1933, Ross told Perelman, ”I think you ought to decide when you write a piece whether it is going to be a parody, or a satire, or nonsense. These are not very successfully mixed in short stuff; that has been my experience. You have some funny lines [here]...but on the whole it is just bewildering....” didn't cotton to Perelman at first. Harold Ross found his writing ”dizzy,” attempting to ”burlesque too many things at once.” In a rejection letter written in 1933, Ross told Perelman, ”I think you ought to decide when you write a piece whether it is going to be a parody, or a satire, or nonsense. These are not very successfully mixed in short stuff; that has been my experience. You have some funny lines [here]...but on the whole it is just bewildering....”

By 1937, though, the magazine's editors had come to see that Perelman had a knack for blurring genres, styles, and tones (or else he simply wore them down), and they signed him up for an annual number of pieces.

A nameless, nervous narrator-a manic version of Thurber's ”little man”-anchors Perelman's stories, a persona that Woody Allen, as well as Don, would borrow. He employs high diction about low matters (”What pitchforked me into this imbroglio was a full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt”), jargon (”we're tops in the nuisance field”), archaisms (”he liked to linger abed”), and exaggerated whimsy (”the text...b.u.t.tonhole[d] me and exud[ed] an opulent aroma of Drambuie and Corona Coronas”).

A Perelman story will s.h.i.+ft, without warning, into a play with stage directions and bare-bones dialogue. Or a piece will begin with material plucked from somewhere else, a magazine quote or a quote from someone else's story. Puns, obscure references, references to popular culture, comic horror, and double entendres make up Perelman's paragraphs. Perhaps the strategy that most intrigued Don was the merging of one world into another. For instance, in a piece called ”Strictly from Mars, or, How to Philander in Five Easy Colors” (October 26, 1946), comic books, pre-Columbian sculptures, and the Jupiter Symphony nestle together in a mad, allusion-filled collage.

One other New Yorker New Yorker regular is notable for his influence on Don's formal experiments. Frank Sullivan, a former regular is notable for his influence on Don's formal experiments. Frank Sullivan, a former New York Herald New York Herald reporter and a member in the early 1920s of the Algonquin Round Table with Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and James Thurber, began contributing to the magazine in 1926. In 1932, he inaugurated the ”Greetings, Friends!” Christmas poem, and wrote an annual year-end verse until 1974, when Roger Angell, Don's editor at the magazine, took over for him. Sullivan's other signature was his character Mr. Arbuthnot, the ”Cliche Expert.” In dozens of pieces throughout the thirties and forties, Mr. Arbuthnot expounded on subjects as varied as love, politics, alcohol, movies, war, and crime. His reflections took the form of ”testimonies” and were presented in Q & A fas.h.i.+on: reporter and a member in the early 1920s of the Algonquin Round Table with Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and James Thurber, began contributing to the magazine in 1926. In 1932, he inaugurated the ”Greetings, Friends!” Christmas poem, and wrote an annual year-end verse until 1974, when Roger Angell, Don's editor at the magazine, took over for him. Sullivan's other signature was his character Mr. Arbuthnot, the ”Cliche Expert.” In dozens of pieces throughout the thirties and forties, Mr. Arbuthnot expounded on subjects as varied as love, politics, alcohol, movies, war, and crime. His reflections took the form of ”testimonies” and were presented in Q & A fas.h.i.+on: A...You realize, of course, what the dropping of that test bomb in the stillness of the New Mexico night did. Q What did it do? A A It ushered in the atomic age, that's what it did. You know what kind of discovery this is? It ushered in the atomic age, that's what it did. You know what kind of discovery this is? Q What kind? A A A tremendous scientific discovery. A tremendous scientific discovery. Q Could the atomic age have arrived by means of any other verb than ”usher”? A A No. ”Usher” has the priority. No. ”Usher” has the priority. Q Mr. Arbuthnot, what will never be the same? A A The world. The world. Q Are you pleased? A A I don't know. I don't know.

For Don, these pieces were unintentional parodies of the Baltimore Catechism Baltimore Catechism. They were also appealing for their skewering of overused language, their wrenching of familiar phrases into new and humorous contexts, and their light treatment of grave subjects.

By eventually accepting cross-genre pieces, and stories of increasing complexity and range, The New Yorker The New Yorker stretched readers' perceptions, first of humor, then of cultural dialogue. It cemented its widening reputation as a serious magazine in August 1946 with the publication of John Hersey's ”Hiros.h.i.+ma,” a devastating account of nuclear destruction. Harold Ross knew that stretched readers' perceptions, first of humor, then of cultural dialogue. It cemented its widening reputation as a serious magazine in August 1946 with the publication of John Hersey's ”Hiros.h.i.+ma,” a devastating account of nuclear destruction. Harold Ross knew that The New Yorker The New Yorker had turned a corner at that point. ”I started to get out a light magazine that wouldn't concern itself with the weighty problems of the universe, and now look at me,” he wrote Howard Brubaker. had turned a corner at that point. ”I started to get out a light magazine that wouldn't concern itself with the weighty problems of the universe, and now look at me,” he wrote Howard Brubaker.

The magazine's array of light and sober prose, cartoons, and glittering ads would serve as Don's template of stylish absurdity mixed with serious intent until his father gave him Marcel Raymond's book. Even after he'd read From Baudelaire to Surrealism, The New Yorker From Baudelaire to Surrealism, The New Yorker's pull proved irresistible to him.

”Style is not much a matter of choice,” Don said. And he maintained that childhood reading thrills never really fade. He also claimed that Rafael Sabatini's adventure stories were a lifelong presence in his work.

The novel Captain Blood: His Odyssey Captain Blood: His Odyssey was published in 1922, followed in 1930 by a story collection, was published in 1922, followed in 1930 by a story collection, Captain Blood Returns Captain Blood Returns, and finally by a book of novellas, The Fortunes of Captain Blood The Fortunes of Captain Blood, in 1936. Errol Flynn played the pirate hero in a movie in 1935, one of the first films Don ever saw.

At first blush, Blood seems an entirely different rascal from Thurber's ”little man,” but the figures do share some traits, and both add a pinch to Don's typical literary persona. Like Walter Mitty, Blood is fiercely imaginative and intelligent. While not hapless, he does harbor hidden longings-particularly for his secret love, Arabella Bishop. And like Mitty, he is frequently misunderstood. Both men hope to do right but are regularly thwarted by circ.u.mstance.