Part 24 (1/2)

Magazine work and teaching were time-consuming and draining, but also revitalizing for Don. Briefly, he distracted himself from worries about Anne. He could work through literary problems unrelated to his own writing (though he continued to labor diligently on stories), and he was surrounded by people-students and younger colleagues-who looked to him as a pioneer, a mentor, a father figure.

”I was in every sense his junior and happy to carry his cup of coffee,” Mirsky says.

Nationally, Don's profile continued to rise. Leslie Cross, a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Milwaukee Journal, who was visiting New York, called and asked to interview him. Surprised and pleased that a woman from Milwaukee had read his fiction, Don met her at the Cedar Tavern. Immediately, he asked her if she'd seen Fiction Fiction magazine. He was quite proud of it. ”When a magazine like magazine. He was quite proud of it. ”When a magazine like Harper's Bazaar Harper's Bazaar announces it isn't buying any more fiction and book publishers cut back on their fiction lists but find money for stuff like announces it isn't buying any more fiction and book publishers cut back on their fiction lists but find money for stuff like Valley of the Dolls Valley of the Dolls, that seems to me madness, sheer idiocy. So we're getting out this newspaper,” he said. ”It's a co-op: the writers don't get paid; the artists don't get paid; the editors get paid, the printers get paid. It's cheap to produce because it's on newsprint and it's done offset. It's printed in a Chinese plant down in Broome Street. This causes some problems because they don't speak much English around there. But it's selling!”

Don was getting ready for another trip to Buffalo. Ms. Cross wondered if writing could really be taught. No, Don said, but it could be encouraged. ”I don't lecture,” he explained. ”Rather than talking about the art of fiction-which I haven't yet understood myself-I read ma.n.u.scripts. I take a pencil and say, 'This is good' or 'That sentence doesn't do what you want it to do.' All the while I emphasize that this is only one man's opinion-I might be wrong, but consider it. I try to bring up what the student is trying to do, because you don't want to produce little imitations of yourself. I'm fairly rough with their ma.n.u.scripts, and they appreciate it.”

After a couple of drinks, Don said he had to go. The Sales were having plumbing problems, and Don had to let them into his apartment so they could take baths. He helped Ms. Cross hail a cab. With ”Texas-sized strides,” she said, he walked back up West Eleventh Street. That evening, he was due at Grace Paley's for supper: one last taste of neighborhood comfort before braving the snows of Buffalo.

Along with newspaper reporters, young academic scholars were beginning to notice Don. In December 1972, he was asked to give a formal talk on fiction at the annual meeting of the Modern Language a.s.sociation, the nation's largest professional organization for English professors. Serious critical articles on Don's work had been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The New Republic The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The New Republic, and The New York Review of Books The New York Review of Books, as well as in academic journals such as Twentieth Century Literature, The Minnesota Review, Modern Occasions, The Hudson Review Twentieth Century Literature, The Minnesota Review, Modern Occasions, The Hudson Review, and the Western Humanities Review. Western Humanities Review. Don's stories received lengthy attention in books, including Tony Tanner's Don's stories received lengthy attention in books, including Tony Tanner's City of Words City of Words, William Peden's The American Short Story The American Short Story, Charles B. Harris's Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd, and Ihab Ha.s.san's Contemporary American Literature. Contemporary American Literature. Most of these commentators cla.s.sified Don as a ”black humorist” whose ”disjunctions” came from the ”absurdity” of modern life, or they hailed him as the most successful purveyor of American Surrealism. Most of these commentators cla.s.sified Don as a ”black humorist” whose ”disjunctions” came from the ”absurdity” of modern life, or they hailed him as the most successful purveyor of American Surrealism.

A dissenting voice rose from Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote in the June 4, 1972, issue of The New York Times Book Review The New York Times Book Review that Don's art was random, antiseptic, unemotional, disengaged from the world, and ultimately irresponsible. ”If you refuse to make choices,” she said, accusing Don's fiction of lacking clear values, ”someone else will make them for you.” that Don's art was random, antiseptic, unemotional, disengaged from the world, and ultimately irresponsible. ”If you refuse to make choices,” she said, accusing Don's fiction of lacking clear values, ”someone else will make them for you.”

In the early 1970s, the most determined scholar pursuing Don was an a.s.sistant professor at Northern Illinois University named Jerome Klinkowitz. He taught contemporary literature and, finding Don's work distinctive, wrote to him care of Lynn Nesbit. He asked to do an interview-which eventually appeared in a book called The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers, edited by Joe David Bellamy and published by the University of Illinois Press in 1974. The book included talks with John Barth, Susan Sontag, Kurt Vonnegut, William Ga.s.s, Joyce Carol Oates, and others.

Don told Klinkowitz in a letter, ”Usually I don't like to be interviewed, for several reasons, among which Paranoia is probably Paramount. However, your project sounds like a meaningful one, and I would be willing to answer written questions, which would give me an opportunity to think rather than mumble.”

Klinkowitz ”put together a kit of sorts, with each question typed at the head of a blank page which Barthelme could fill as amply or spa.r.s.ely as he chose.” When a month pa.s.sed with no reply from Don, Klinkowitz nudged him with a note. Don wrote back, ”Dear Mr. Klinkowitz-I know I know I know.”

Another month of silence ensued. Klinkowitz was about to write Don again, when the phone rang late one afternoon. ”The voice was clipped and mannered in a way that sounded almost British, and I was surprised to hear it was Donald Barthelme calling from New York,” Klinkowitz said. He recalled their conversation: ”I've just put my answers to your questions in the mail,” he said, and I remarked that this was good news indeed and thanked him. Yet his tone was anything but happy; in fact, he was apologizing for the material, and urged that I not even open the package when it arrived.”Are you retracting the interview?” I asked in alarm, but Barthelme a.s.sured me that he wasn't, that I could do anything I wanted with his answers. He just felt badly that ”they weren't any good,” and didn't want me to be bothered with such nonsense.”I thought of pulling them out of the mailbox,” he admitted, ”but that would be misunderstood.”

In fact, Klinkowitz was delighted with the answers. They were full, funny, and honest, touching on Don's journalistic background, his love of music, and his pa.s.sion for European literature. ”I think fewer people are reading,” he said in answer to a question about the ”death of the novel.” ”I invite you to notice that the new opium of the people is opium, or at least morphine. In a situation in which morphine contends with morpheme, the latter loses every time.” As for his working methods, Don said, ”I do a lot of failing and that keeps me interested.”

In preparing the interview for book publication, Klinkowitz arranged the Q & A in New Yorker New Yorkerstyle columns and type. This distressed Don. ”I think it's too cute and also serves to place too much emphasis on the NYer-as if the magazine were in some sense responsible for what I do,” he said. Klinkowitz agreed to drop the format.

Don could not resist devising his own question to end the piece: ”In your story 'See the Moon?' one of the characters has the line 'Fragments are the only forms I trust.' This has been quoted as a statement of your aesthetic. Is it?”

Don answered Don: ”No. It's a statement by a character about what he is feeling at that particular moment. I hope that whatever I think about aesthetics would be a shade more complicated than that. Because that particular line has been richly misunderstood so often (most recently by my colleague J. C. Oates in the Times Times), I have thought of making a public recantation. I can see the story in, say, Women's Wear Daily: Women's Wear Daily:

”WRITER CONFESSES THAT HE NO LONGER TRUSTS FRAGMENTS.

”Trust 'Misplaced,' Author Declares _________________________________.

”DISCUSSED DECISION WITH DAUGHTER, SIX

”Will Seek 'Wholes' in Future, He Says”

”NEW Y YORK, JUNE 24 (A & P)-Donald Barthelme, 41 year-old writer and well-known fragmentist, said today that he no longer trusted fragments. He added that although he had once been 'very fond' of fragments, he had found them to be 'finally untrustworthy.' 24 (A & P)-Donald Barthelme, 41 year-old writer and well-known fragmentist, said today that he no longer trusted fragments. He added that although he had once been 'very fond' of fragments, he had found them to be 'finally untrustworthy.'

”The author, looking tense and drawn after what was described as 'considerable thought,' made his dramatic late-night announcement at a Sixth Avenue laundromat press conference, from which the press was excluded.

”Sources close to the soap machine said, however, that the agonizing reappraisal, which took place before their eyes, required only four minutes.

” 'Fragments fall apart a lot,' Barthelme said. Use of antelope blood as a bonding agent had not proved...' ”

This was not the sort of reply to appease stern critics.

In 1972, Don received the Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in recognition of his achievement in writing. The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine was nominated for a National Book Award. was nominated for a National Book Award.

The NBA was a twenty-two-year-old program in 1972-a series of literary prizes funded by the book industry and administered by a committee composed of a group of editors, sales personnel, publicists, book reviewers, and former prizewinners. Annually, the committee awarded one-thousand-dollar prizes to the authors of the year's ”best books,” in an effort to promote the ”wider and wiser use of books.” Initially, the committee considered only fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. By 1972, the number of prize categories had jumped to ten, to include Arts and Letters, Biography, Contemporary Affairs, Fiction, History, Children's Books, Philosophy and Religion, Poetry, the Sciences, and Translation. Literary purists grumbled that the awards had been watered down, publicists were happy to pounce on several new advertising opportunities, and in general the NBA tried to steer an honest course between literary excellence and good business.

The award ceremonies were held in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in late April. By all accounts, it was a rather melancholy affair. Three of the prizewinners were dead. Flannery O'Connor, who had pa.s.sed away in 1964, topped the fiction category with her just-published volume of collected stories. The late Frank O'Hara's Collected Poems Collected Poems split the poetry prize with Howard Moss's split the poetry prize with Howard Moss's Selected Poems Selected Poems, and the history award went to the recently deceased Allan Nevins for the final two volumes of Ordeal of the Union Ordeal of the Union, his eight-volume study of the Civil War.

The ceremony was made even gloomier by many of the prizewinners' forecasts about the planet, the subject of several nominated books, such as George L. Small's lament for the vanis.h.i.+ng Blue Whale. Blue Whale. Other speakers warned against creeping commercialism in the book trade; the previous year, businessman Leonard Riggio had bought New York's floundering Barnes & n.o.ble store, sold B & N's publis.h.i.+ng division to Harper & Row, and made plans to create a huge discount-bookselling chain, sending tremors of fear through small presses and literary enthusiasts. Other speakers warned against creeping commercialism in the book trade; the previous year, businessman Leonard Riggio had bought New York's floundering Barnes & n.o.ble store, sold B & N's publis.h.i.+ng division to Harper & Row, and made plans to create a huge discount-bookselling chain, sending tremors of fear through small presses and literary enthusiasts.

And what would an awards show be without controversy? Gary Wills walked out when his fellow judges in Contemporary Affairs chose The Last Whole Earth Catalogue The Last Whole Earth Catalogue, a ”non-book,” said Wills, put together by a committee. And Lore Segal, a longtime writer of juveniles, protested when her fellow judges awarded a newcomer who had weighed in with a decidedly off-kilter book: Donald Barthelme and The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine. The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine.

Unlike many of the winners, Don kept his acceptance speech to a graceful minimum. ”Writing for children, like talking to them, is full of mysteries,” he said, adding: I have a child, a six-year-old, and I a.s.sure you I approach her with a copy of Mr. Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity Seven Types of Ambiguity held firmly in my right hand. If I ask her which of two types of cereal she prefers for breakfast, I invariably find upon presenting the bowl that I have misread my instructions-that it was the other kind she wanted. In the same way it is quite conceivable to me that I may have written the wrong book-some other book was what was wanted. One does the best one can. I must point out that television has affected the situation enormously. My pictures don't move. What's wrong with them? I went into this with Michael di Capua, my editor [for held firmly in my right hand. If I ask her which of two types of cereal she prefers for breakfast, I invariably find upon presenting the bowl that I have misread my instructions-that it was the other kind she wanted. In the same way it is quite conceivable to me that I may have written the wrong book-some other book was what was wanted. One does the best one can. I must point out that television has affected the situation enormously. My pictures don't move. What's wrong with them? I went into this with Michael di Capua, my editor [for this this book] at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, who incidentally improved the book out of all recognition, and he told me sadly that no, he couldn't make the pictures move. I asked my child once what her mother was doing, at a particular moment, and she replied that mother was ”watching a book.” The difficulty is to manage a book worth watching. The problem, as I say, is full of mysteries, but mysteries are not to be avoided. Rather they are a locus of hope, they enrich and complicate. That is why we have them. That is perhaps one of the reasons why we have children. book] at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, who incidentally improved the book out of all recognition, and he told me sadly that no, he couldn't make the pictures move. I asked my child once what her mother was doing, at a particular moment, and she replied that mother was ”watching a book.” The difficulty is to manage a book worth watching. The problem, as I say, is full of mysteries, but mysteries are not to be avoided. Rather they are a locus of hope, they enrich and complicate. That is why we have them. That is perhaps one of the reasons why we have children.

40.

SADNESS.

Sadness, Don's fourth short story collection, published on September 19, 1972, signaled a more personal turn in his work. Though most of its contents had appeared in The New Yorker The New Yorker over the previous three years, the most formally complex pieces, ”Traumerei” and ”The Sandman,” had been rejected by the magazine. Don did not include ”The Educational Experience” and ”At the End of the Mechanical Age,” which Angell had pa.s.sed on. over the previous three years, the most formally complex pieces, ”Traumerei” and ”The Sandman,” had been rejected by the magazine. Don did not include ”The Educational Experience” and ”At the End of the Mechanical Age,” which Angell had pa.s.sed on.

The book contained fewer graphics and less typographical play than Don's earlier efforts-Angell had informed him that William Shawn was getting fed up with such stuff, so Don produced less of it. He worked significant changes on ”The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace” and ”A Film” between magazine and book publication-mostly to avoid repet.i.tions and set pieces that didn't contribute to an overall effect. The order of the stories in prepublication galleys differs widely from that of the finished book. The shuffling indicates that Don was still trying to get a feel for the new directions and registers of the stories-directions implied by the simplicity of the t.i.tle.

”Sadness was a different sort of t.i.tle [for me],” Don said, ”and I thought a long while before using it. And somebody, I think it was Rust Hills of was a different sort of t.i.tle [for me],” Don said, ”and I thought a long while before using it. And somebody, I think it was Rust Hills of Esquire Esquire, inquired how the devil I ever got the publishers to accept it, how I got away with it. I'm not sure I did get away with it in the sense of having it work as a book t.i.tle, but it's not embarra.s.sing to look at. Of course, it's ironic, as well as being what it is.”

Wordplay remains central to his fiction, but more than expressing verbal irony, the t.i.tle emphasizes a psychological stance toward the world. This is underscored in the one pa.s.sage in the book that includes the word sadness. sadness. In the story ”The Rise of Capitalism,” the narrator says, ”The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was a.s.sume an att.i.tude-melancholy sadness-toward it.” Don's satire, wit, and erudition are abundant from page to page, but more than his previous collections, the book explores the att.i.tudes of recognizable men and women living under late capitalism in late-twentieth-century America. In the story ”The Rise of Capitalism,” the narrator says, ”The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was a.s.sume an att.i.tude-melancholy sadness-toward it.” Don's satire, wit, and erudition are abundant from page to page, but more than his previous collections, the book explores the att.i.tudes of recognizable men and women living under late capitalism in late-twentieth-century America.