Part 11 (1/2)

As he began to write in earnest, Don had his eye on visual art, theater, film, and music. He also thought about what it meant to be a Texan. Two of his short essays, published in the spring of 1960, decipher Texas ”signs,” and suggest that the Lone Star State left him hanging.”Culture, Etc.,” published in the Texas Observer Texas Observer on March 25, explored the ”myth that every Texan is in some sense a cowboy, or capable of being one, or should possess the cowboy virtues.” This myth, Don said, is ”received from the media” and enforces ”provincialism.” It produces exquisite ironies: on March 25, explored the ”myth that every Texan is in some sense a cowboy, or capable of being one, or should possess the cowboy virtues.” This myth, Don said, is ”received from the media” and enforces ”provincialism.” It produces exquisite ironies: ... we have the moneyed cowboy whose money proceeds not from cattle but from a nice little plastics plant. To complicate the picture insanely, let us say that he is also, in his rough-hewn way, a patron of the arts. Note that the drama here is generated by the delicious incongruity he presents-and savors-in his role of the cultured cowboy: ”I died with my boots on in the Art Museum.” When we remember that he is not a cowboy at all but a plastics engineer, the multiple level of the charade is revealed, the lostness of the leading actor established.

Frequently, Don encountered such ”schizophrenics” in Houston's art circles. He felt the pressure, familiar to every Texas male, to adopt a laconic G.o.d-and-football swagger. The ”ritual demands of the [cowboy] role” sever ”certain important areas of thought and feeling” from anyone who tries it on, Don wrote.

One afternoon, in the Texana section of the Brown Book Shop, he discovered a curious, slender novel self-published by H. L. Hunt. It was called Alpaca Alpaca, and it took place in a ”tiny, vaguely Southern American republic.” Hunt was a Dallas millionaire who fit the stereotype of the Texas oil tyc.o.o.n. His novel was a radical proposal for changing the U.S. Const.i.tution, disguised as a utopian fantasy: The ”establishment of a perfect state where the number of votes a man has bears some resemblance to his financial status.” As Don notes, one of Hunt's characters claims, ”[W]hat is good for the possessor of the greatest wealth in the Nation is good for the poorest citizen.”

Don reviewed the book in the Reporter Reporter on April 14 and mocked the ”modesty” of men like Hunt: ”One of the disadvantages of being the richest man in the country (or the second or fourth) must be a profound sense of political frustration,” he wrote. ”No matter how many billions you command, you are given under the Const.i.tution only one vote. The insult is personal; in the voting booth, you are brought at a stroke to the level of the poorest citizen....H. L. Hunt of Dallas sets out to correct this gross equity.” on April 14 and mocked the ”modesty” of men like Hunt: ”One of the disadvantages of being the richest man in the country (or the second or fourth) must be a profound sense of political frustration,” he wrote. ”No matter how many billions you command, you are given under the Const.i.tution only one vote. The insult is personal; in the voting booth, you are brought at a stroke to the level of the poorest citizen....H. L. Hunt of Dallas sets out to correct this gross equity.”

In the fall of 1960, around the time he began drafting ”The Darling Duckling at School,” Don negotiated with the New York producers of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape Krapp's Last Tape and Edward Albee's and Edward Albee's The Zoo Story The Zoo Story to bring the shows to Houston, under the auspices of the Contemporary Arts a.s.sociation. An off-Broadway cast from the Cricket Theatre had performed both plays in Manhattan, and Don arranged for a double-bill performance in the University of Houston's Cullen Auditorium on January 30 and 31. to bring the shows to Houston, under the auspices of the Contemporary Arts a.s.sociation. An off-Broadway cast from the Cricket Theatre had performed both plays in Manhattan, and Don arranged for a double-bill performance in the University of Houston's Cullen Auditorium on January 30 and 31.

Shortly afterward, he persuaded a local actor, Tom Toner of the Alley Theatre, to give a staged reading from Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground Notes from Underground. Mack McCormick, a Houston folklorist, wrote a musical based on the song ”Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley,” and Don staged it at the Contemporary Arts Museum. McCormick had recently seen the once-legendary blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins playing to small crowds in Dowling Street dance halls. With Don's help, he arranged a Hopkins concert at the museum.

Don's energy, his creativity, and his ability to get things done impressed his fellow board members. They urged him to consider filling the vacancy left by Bob Morris. Don was writing now; he did not want a full-time job. He asked if a part-time director would satisfy the board. They responded enthusiastically.

On March 12, 1961, Don submitted his formal application to the CAA. ”Don relished the challenge of it,” Helen recalled. Upon receiving the board's approval, he ”began a schedule in which he wrote for at least four, sometimes five hours, after which he turned his attention to the museum. It was an ideal schedule for Don.”

His first initiative was to arrange a lecture by Harold Rosenberg. ”Every year something almost takes me to Texas but I never quite make it,” Rosenberg replied to Don's query. ”The minumum fee would be $250. Perhaps this is more than you had in mind, so that once again I shall have almost visited Texas. It was pleasant to hear from you again.”

While Don courted Rosenberg, The New Yorker The New Yorker ran two long articles, in back-to-back issues, on ”The Super-American State” of Texas. Don feared Rosenberg would see them and ran two long articles, in back-to-back issues, on ”The Super-American State” of Texas. Don feared Rosenberg would see them and never never want to visit Houston. The writer, John Bainbridge, offered old chestnuts: ”The life-style in Texas is marked by bravado, zest, optimism, ebullience.” He was seduced by cliches: the ”so called American Dream...come[s] true...in Texas. Novels and movies about Texas sometimes give the impression that the native millionaires travel in nothing but four-engine airplanes complete with bar [and] galley....As a matter of fact, some years ago [oilman] Glenn McCarthy did own a Boeing Stratocruiser....” want to visit Houston. The writer, John Bainbridge, offered old chestnuts: ”The life-style in Texas is marked by bravado, zest, optimism, ebullience.” He was seduced by cliches: the ”so called American Dream...come[s] true...in Texas. Novels and movies about Texas sometimes give the impression that the native millionaires travel in nothing but four-engine airplanes complete with bar [and] galley....As a matter of fact, some years ago [oilman] Glenn McCarthy did own a Boeing Stratocruiser....”

Don was particularly incensed by the magzine's dismissal of Texas's cultural treasures. John Graves, one of the best writers in the state, got only a pa.s.sing nod in the piece; instead, Bainbridge lingered over purple-prosers like Mary La.s.swell and Mrs. Perry Wampler Nichols (who wrote, ”Visitors stepping into this land of bluebonnets and endless skies find weaving about their hearts, like webs spun by giant spiders, the love of something friendly and great”). Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum, one of the country's most innovative inst.i.tutions of its kind, was not mentioned.

”What is the biographer going to do for a region that has so few men of distinction?” the historian Walter Prescott Webb once asked about Texas. The question, Bainbridge said, still awaited an answer.

On April 13, Don wrote Rosenberg, ”It's cheering to find that you're not intimidated by all that nonsense in the New Yorker New Yorker.” His citizen's pride had been hurt; worse, he knew he could have done a better job for the magazine.

He agreed to Rosenberg's fee. ”I'm pleased at the idea of having you on our cultural vaudeville series,” he said. As to the potential crowd size, he said, ”I can only suggest that we have had audiences ranging from one to three or four hundreds for these things. Some of them will be very knowledgeable, some won't.”

Rosenberg arrived in Houston on May 10, and stayed for three days. Don put him up in the Warwick, one of the city's finest hotels, near the Museum of Fine Arts and the Rice Inst.i.tute. Rosenberg drew a moderate crowd for his lecture, which was on the ”subject of continuity and novelty in contemporary painting.”

John Bainbridge's pat view of Texas would have collapsed if he'd learned that the director of an arts museum in Houston, who staged Beckett plays and Lightnin' Hopkins concerts, was writing short stories like ”Florence Green Is 81,” in which the narrator, a writer named Baskerville, ”free a.s.sociat[es], brilliantly, brilliantly,” to ”put” the reader into the center of his consciousness.

Baskerville, an ex-Catholic and an admirer of Edmund Husserl, edits with his ”left hand a small magazine, very scholarly, very brilliant, called The Journal of Tension Reduction The Journal of Tension Reduction (social-psychological studies, learned disputation, letters-to-the-editor, anxiety in rats).” The range of references in his thought stream reflects the articles he has edited: lentils, Siberia, Quemoy and Matsu, the population of Santa Ana, California, the Sea of Okhotsk. The story takes place at a dinner party in the home of Florence Green, a wealthy arts patron. Baskerville, working to secure funding for his magazine, flirts unsuccessfully with an attractive young woman across the table, drinks too much, and admires Florence Green's desire to go someplace ”where (social-psychological studies, learned disputation, letters-to-the-editor, anxiety in rats).” The range of references in his thought stream reflects the articles he has edited: lentils, Siberia, Quemoy and Matsu, the population of Santa Ana, California, the Sea of Okhotsk. The story takes place at a dinner party in the home of Florence Green, a wealthy arts patron. Baskerville, working to secure funding for his magazine, flirts unsuccessfully with an attractive young woman across the table, drinks too much, and admires Florence Green's desire to go someplace ”where everything is different everything is different.”

Two years later, when the story appeared in Harper's Bazaar Harper's Bazaar, ”several prominent Houstonians”-including Dominique de Menil-”believed the character of Florence was based on each of them,” Helen recalled.

At about the time Don took charge at the museum, he was working on two other stories, ”The Big Broadcast of 1938” and ”The Viennese Opera Ball,” both of which would appear in literary journals in 1962 (”Broadcast” in New World Writing New World Writing and the ”Opera Ball” in and the ”Opera Ball” in Contact Contact). ”The Viennese Opera Ball” presents a rush of c.o.c.ktail-party chatter-a language collage. ”The Big Broadcast of 1938” tells the story of Bloomsbury, a man recently divorced from his wife, Martha. Somehow, in exchange for giving Martha the house he had shared with her, he has acquired a radio station: ”Bloomsbury could now play 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' which he had always admired immoderately, on account of its finality, as often as he liked. It meant, to him, that everything was finished. Therefore he played it daily, 60 times between 6 and 10 a.m., 120 times between 12 noon and 7 p.m., and the whole night long except when, as was sometimes the case, he was talking.”

His ”talking” consists of repeating a word-nevertheless, say-over and over for a quarter of an hour, during which the ”word would frequently disclose new properties, [and] unsuspected qualities.” Despite its absurd premise, the story is genuinely moving, as Bloomsbury, a man alone in the middle of the night, talks to his distant ex, who is probably not even listening. He broadcasts his oddly evocative words until the electric company, whose bill he hasn't paid, shuts him down.

In May of 1961, after he had directed the Contemporary Arts Museum for less than two months, Don learned of a writer's conference sponsored by Wagner College on Staten Island. Saul Bellow, Robert Lowell, and Edward Albee would be the writers in residence. Sterling Lord, a powerful literary agent, was scheduled to give a lecture on publis.h.i.+ng. Only fifteen fiction writers would be selected to have their work critiqued by Bellow. Don was interested in the opportunity; he was also excited about the possibility of seeing New York City for the first time.

He mailed off a personal bio along with ”The Darling Duckling at School” and ”The Big Broadcast of 1938,” which he had just sold to New World Writing New World Writing. Right away, the conference organizers accepted his application.

On July 9, he and Helen flew into Newark and then took a shuttle bus to Manhattan's East Side. They knew nothing of New York except that Grand Central Terminal was conveniently located and that it was near the Mobil Oil offices, where Joe Maranto worked. ”[Our] hotel and its setting were bleak,” Helen recalled.

The couple spent the weekend with Joe and Maggie Maranto. They walked to Central Park, to the Museum of Modern Art, and to the Met. It was a ”treat” to stop in randomly at galleries. Mostly, though, they were overwhelmed by all there was to see in so short a time.

On Monday morning, they walked through Battery Park to Manhattan's southern tip. The ferries for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty left from there; Castle Garden (now called Clinton Castle), an old fort that had once protected the harbor, drew crowds with its fast-food stands and coinoperated binoculars offering views of the water. At one time, Castle Garden had processed immigrants. On this pleasant summer morning, Don and Helen were immigrants in a new world, and they shared the excitement of the people around them.

They walked past the waterfront's perpendicular piers (the ”miserable...slipshod, shambling piers of New York,” Herman Melville once said of them). At the Staten Island Ferry terminal, shabby and crowded with pizza shops, Don bought a pair of tickets.

After crossing the water, the couple caught a cab to Wagner College. The conference was scheduled for ten days and would consist of cla.s.s sessions, individual meetings with the writers in residence, readings, and lectures. Don and Helen shared a dorm room and ate in a campus dining hall. Among the other students at the conference were Susan Dworkin, only nineteen (she would become an accomplished playwright), Arno Karlen, a promising short story writer whom Don had published in Forum Forum, Buzz Farber, who would end up acting in Norman Mailer's films, and Sarah Dabney, an instructor at Smith College. ”This was Don's first intimate contact with other accomplished writers and the first important critical acknowledgement he received,” Helen wrote. Still, he was ”uncomfortable in the role of student. Since his teen years, he had been at the center of any creative group in which he took part.”

Saul Bellow was a notoriously poor teacher. His ”heart wasn't in it,” says his biographer, James Atlas. Bellow had come to Wagner that summer expecting ”leisurely days and idle nights.” Instead, he told a friend, he had wound up ”sweating over papers and talking 12 hours a day til my mouth was like an ashpit.” The temperature hovered at around ”106 degrees, like a stokehold.”

The Adventures of Augie March had made him famous. Don ”saw him as the major American novelist of our time,” Helen recalled. Dworkin wrote, ”[T]hat summer, no one in the world mattered more than Saul Bellow.” The great man was uncomfortable, carrying the weight of the world. His students' ” 'ego-stricken needs' unnerved him.” Dworkin said he ”sat and listened to us read our work in cla.s.s. He sat with his thumb pressed to his temple, like a man rehearsing suicide. Sometimes he gazed into s.p.a.ce-and when he was forced to look at us, it was with had made him famous. Don ”saw him as the major American novelist of our time,” Helen recalled. Dworkin wrote, ”[T]hat summer, no one in the world mattered more than Saul Bellow.” The great man was uncomfortable, carrying the weight of the world. His students' ” 'ego-stricken needs' unnerved him.” Dworkin said he ”sat and listened to us read our work in cla.s.s. He sat with his thumb pressed to his temple, like a man rehearsing suicide. Sometimes he gazed into s.p.a.ce-and when he was forced to look at us, it was with fear fear. Why this brilliant writer should be afraid of us, I could not understand. I felt sorry for him...I felt guilty in his presence, as though I personally had done whatever it was that had been done to Saul Bellow and was personally trying to destroy him.”

In cla.s.s, Bellow rambled about his marriages and the alimony he paid his former wives. ”For the most part, Bellow said very little about our work,” Dworkin recalled. ”He seemed reluctant to make judgments or give too much guidance.”

Nevertheless, he was brutal to the young men in cla.s.s. Karlen submitted a chapter from a novel that read a lot like Augie March. Augie Augie March. Augie's author ignored it. Farber read a story that seemed to Bellow to romanticize poverty. ”I've lived in dirt, and when you've lived in dirt, there's nothing interesting about it,” Bellow said.

” 'The Big Broadcast' and Don's reading of it [in cla.s.s] clearly intrigued other students,” Helen recalled, ”but Bellow was much less enthusiastic about what Don was doing than the younger people were. I believe he...thought that Don's fictional world was too restricted.”

”Do you really believe it's that hard for people to talk to each other?” was all Bellow said when Don had finished reading.

Don didn't respond.

After the conference, Karlen sent Bellow a letter complaining about the way he had handled the cla.s.s. Bellow replied candidly, admitting that he felt compet.i.tive with other writers, especially men. ”I myself have often been indignant with older writers, and I know how you must have felt,” he wrote. He said that when he looked at Karlen, ”I saw my own pale face twenty years ago...and no doubt I said the wrong thing[s].”

Generally, Bellow was less harsh, though less engaged, with the work of his female students. He told Dworkin, ”You'll be a good writer.” ”I couldn't remember ever having been so happy,” she wrote. Later in the week, at a party, she overheard Bellow confess to someone that he frequently told young writers they were good. ”He hadn't the heart to do otherwise. They needed encouragement so much, much more than they needed hard criticism; he was scared by the need in their faces; he remembered his own need when he was young.”

”I cried and cried,” Dworkin recalled. ”For weeks after [that] at home, I cried. My family didn't know what to do.”

One day in cla.s.s, a woman named Bette Howland (who would later publish many books) presented a story about an abortion. The heat in the room and the student pressure finally cracked Bellow's composure. He blurted that he couldn't stand women writers who ”wore their ovaries on their sleeves.”

In the afternoons, craft sessions brought together all the fiction-writing students. The discussions bored Don. They centered on characterization and scene setting-conventions that Don had worked past in his writing.

One day, a student criticized Bellow for writing Henderson the Rain King Henderson the Rain King when he'd never been to Africa. Don couldn't believe this was even a topic of conversation; imagination was the whole point of fiction, wasn't it? when he'd never been to Africa. Don couldn't believe this was even a topic of conversation; imagination was the whole point of fiction, wasn't it?