Part 25 (2/2)

But, he concluded, ”I haven't seen a government I liked yet.”

43.

GUILTY PLEASURES.

Marion kept her apartment at 274 West Eleventh Street, but spent most of her time at Don's place. Her steady daily life with him-bolstered by his acceptance of the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor at the City College of New York-simmered with creative tension. ”Living unmarried with an artist/writer wasn't bourgeois convention,” Marion says. ”I had a solid, middle-cla.s.s upbringing, and while I wanted a different life-path, [my background] gave me a centeredness and independence that Donald appreciated. I thought he was the most fascinating person I had ever met. He wanted to know everything and he understood everything, even things only women understand. My mother thought he had bewitched me. He had. One of the first mornings I stayed over, he read me all of Krapp's Last Tape Krapp's Last Tape in bed. That could win a girl over.” in bed. That could win a girl over.”

Kirk Sale recalls several small ”spats” peppering the couple's days, but Marion says, ”The only spats we had concerned my long hours at Time Time and Donald's occasional paranoia about my whereabouts.” Max Frisch, on a return visit to the city, wrote this fictionalized portrait of an afternoon he spent with the pair: and Donald's occasional paranoia about my whereabouts.” Max Frisch, on a return visit to the city, wrote this fictionalized portrait of an afternoon he spent with the pair: He is now divorced, the apartment unchanged though recently painted; the INGRES poster in the same place. When she returns home, he looks at his watch: where has she been all this time? She is (so others had told me) a brilliant woman. She greets me with unconcealed curiosity, not entirely free of constraint, but with watchful eyes, as if comparing me with a police description. She is blond, her hair combed upward...they pretend to be joking with each other. It is three o'clock, she left the house at eleven. I say something or other-about West Berlin and East Berlin, I believe. He really wants to know where she has been since eleven o'clock. She laughs and shows what she has bought-not very much. Four hours for that? She is interested in West Berlin and East Berlin. She knows Paris pretty well. She would be happy to make some coffee. His tone is still joking: when one rings her in the office, she is out shopping or has gone to the library, where one can't telephone her; and when one doesn't ring her in the office, she has been there the whole time. She laughs; he does not.

Like Karen Kennerly, Marion put up with but was more amused by Don's possessiveness and jealousy-his constant teasing about younger men who might be her lovers, remarks designed to test her reactions and provoke s.e.xual tension. ”It was a game,” Marion says. ”I never really worried about it; it just seemed to be one of Donald's personality quirks, and I knew he wasn't a 'regular' guy.” Consistently, his stories (”Florence Green Is 81,” ”Can We Talk,” ”Three”) explored the fear of boring one's lover, or the feeling of inadequacy compared to more vigorous or intelligent men. A real fear, clearly, but also, as Marion says, a game-on the page and in the home-played to keep things snappy. With Marion, Don's stratagems were particularly intense. So was his generosity.

”Right after I met Donald, I went to Stonington, a small town in Maine that had an historic granite quarry whose workers-immigrant quarrymen from Scotland, Ireland, and Italy-were still living with lots of colorful stories about the old days,” Marion recalls. ”It was my first freelance piece and it ran in The Maine Times. The Maine Times. Donald gave me a small antique Corona typewriter as a present afterwards.” Donald gave me a small antique Corona typewriter as a present afterwards.”

It pleased him to see her freelance. ”He didn't like Time Time,” Marion says. ”Once, early [in our relations.h.i.+p], I took him up after a dinner to show him my cubicle. Donald felt uncomfortable and never returned. But he was keenly interested in my work and in the office details. When I came home each evening, I would get a gla.s.s of wine and he would pull up a chair to his desk and debrief me. Various details ended up in his work. It was a great lesson for me in observation. He was intensely curious about everything.”

Among the stories she worked on that caught his fancy was a piece on the Unification Church. ”I pretended to be a lost young person so I could infiltrate the church ranks,” Marion remembers. ”Donald advised me about ponytails or braids-which looked sillier and more 'dazed and confused.' When I started freelancing, he went out and bought a bunch of magazines on men's fas.h.i.+on, dressed accordingly and then had me describe him, 'pants puddling at the ankles.' The [fas.h.i.+on] story ran in the Atlantic. Atlantic. I was learning so much. He gave me books to read. We listened to jazz. We looked at art. We were always fixing up the apartment. One spring he painted the walls and I did the windows. When I quit I was learning so much. He gave me books to read. We listened to jazz. We looked at art. We were always fixing up the apartment. One spring he painted the walls and I did the windows. When I quit Time Time, and started freelancing seriously, he took me out to buy a hollow core door desktop, which he set up in the back room on filing cabinets. We had already taken down the kitchen wall and put in a butcher block counter. He loved interior decorating, simple and clean, j.a.panese. Even when we traveled to a hotel, he'd move the furniture around-I think because of the joy of creating a new s.p.a.ce that was unique and beautiful that didn't involve writing.”

Their travel together included summer weeks spent in Copenhagen to visit Anne and Birgit. While there, they stayed in an apartment that belonged to Madame Schuman, an elegant equestrian in the Schuman Circus, which overlooked Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard. ”The acrobats and performers lived there, too,” Marion recalls. ”Donald would write in the mornings and then we would have lunch, get Anne, and sightsee. We invested in a cheap badminton set and the three of us played together in the courtyard. Once, when the birdie got stuck on a second floor window sill, I stood on Donald's shoulders and was able to grab it-to the applause of the circus people who, unknown to us, were watching from a window above.”

Back in New York, Don and Marion would cook together happily. ”People have talked a lot about Donald's melancholy and sadness. It was deep in him, but so was great humor and joy,” she says. ”We once had a big argument which he wrote about and, to my amazement, there was my point of view perfectly understood and represented. He was, as he said, a double-minded man. The only thing that frightened him was not writing well.”

Though they weren't yet married, Don considered Marion his domestic partner. Kirk Sale recalls a conversation with Don in the early 1970s: ”Don asked me if I was having an affair because I looked so happy. I said I was. d.a.m.n if he didn't tell Marion, and d.a.m.n if she she didn't tell Faith, and when I complained to Don, he simply said, 'Men don't have secrets from their wives.' ” didn't tell Faith, and when I complained to Don, he simply said, 'Men don't have secrets from their wives.' ”

It was not his love life but his growing visibility as a literary icon that provoked genuine genuine paranoia in Don. In the December 23, 1973, issue of paranoia in Don. In the December 23, 1973, issue of The New York Times Book Review The New York Times Book Review, he published the following letter: The fall 1973 number of the Carolina Quarterly contains a story called ”Divorce” and signed with my name. As it happens, I did not write it. It is quite a worthy effort, as pastiches go, and particularly successful in reproducing my weaknesses. A second story, ”Cannon,” also signed with my name, appears in the current issue of Voyages. As a candidate-member of the Scandinavian Inst.i.tute of Comparative Vandalism, I would rate the second item somewhat inferior to the first, but again, I am not responsible. May I say, as a sort of notice to mariners, that only ma.n.u.scripts offered to editors by my agent, Lynn Nesbit, are authentic-not good or bad, but at least authentic.

”Divorce” mimics several of Don's stories, including ”Philadelphia,” ”City Life,” and ”Porcupines at the University.” Pa.s.sive voice, non sequiturs, and absurd imagery predominate, but without the philosophical underpinning or melancholy that give Don's best efforts their gravity and meaning. Don's ”golden ear” is nowhere in evidence.

Even clunkier is ”Cannon!” which appeared in Voyages Voyages and in the Winter 1973 issue of and in the Winter 1973 issue of The Georgia Review. The Georgia Review. ”Cannon!” echoes ”Porcupines at the University,” but where the language in Don's story is an obvious parody of film Westerns and country music, ”Cannon!” and ”Divorce” offer deliberately mixed metaphors and abstract phrasing ”Cannon!” echoes ”Porcupines at the University,” but where the language in Don's story is an obvious parody of film Westerns and country music, ”Cannon!” and ”Divorce” offer deliberately mixed metaphors and abstract phrasing without without Don's satiric intent. Don's satiric intent.

In the Spring 1974 issue of The Georgia Review The Georgia Review, Edward Krickel, the editor, apologized to readers and to Don for being duped. ”Admittedly, editing a journal easily becomes a kind of celebrity-mongering,” he wrote, but he defended his decision to publish the piece on the basis of its ”quality.” He said he wasn't wasn't dazzled by the name Barthelme on the ma.n.u.script. ”Why would anyone mask as anyone else?” he asked. ”Specifically, why would anyone other than the real author submit a story under the name of Donald Barthelme, correspond with us on letterhead stationery (and pompously say he was 'glad to help out down there'), correct proofs, submit upon request a social security number so that he might be paid-all of this over a period of six months before the truth came out? For money? We don't pay that much.” dazzled by the name Barthelme on the ma.n.u.script. ”Why would anyone mask as anyone else?” he asked. ”Specifically, why would anyone other than the real author submit a story under the name of Donald Barthelme, correspond with us on letterhead stationery (and pompously say he was 'glad to help out down there'), correct proofs, submit upon request a social security number so that he might be paid-all of this over a period of six months before the truth came out? For money? We don't pay that much.”

He concluded that the hoaxer was a ”monster of malice” seeking to ”damage” Don's reputation.

One more fake appeared in 1973, ”Sentence Pa.s.sed on the Show of a Nation's Brain Damage, etc., Or, The Autobiography of a Crime,” a poor pastiche of Don's visual collages, published by Chicago's December Press.

Don's letter to the Book Review Book Review effectively silenced the prankster or pranksters. effectively silenced the prankster or pranksters.

Meanwhile, Don had published several pieces under pseudonyms. Publicly, he admitted to wearing only one mask, Lily McNeil, which he first used to parody the theatrical style of women's magazine articles. One day, ”Esquire called up and wanted to know if Lily would be interested in writing a monthly column for them, giving the women's view on things,” he said. ”Lily...didn't feel up to it.” called up and wanted to know if Lily would be interested in writing a monthly column for them, giving the women's view on things,” he said. ”Lily...didn't feel up to it.”

Later, William White was another name he used, in The New Yorker The New Yorker's ”Talk of the Town” section, in pieces parodying book reviewers and fas.h.i.+onable new authors.

While he was busy writing, with or without a false face, Don continued to bring other people's work to the attention of readers as one of the invisible editors of Fiction. Fiction. Mark Mirsky had finally talked City College into giving the magazine a small office and a stipend for a graduate student to help with production. Owing to Don's and Marianne Frisch's connections, the magazine published an astonis.h.i.+ng array of talent: J. G. Ballard, John Barth, Samuel Beckett, Robert Creeley, Kenneth Koch, Thomas McGuane, Nathalie Sarraute, Leonard Michaels, Russell Banks, Anthony Burgess, Frederick Busch, William Kittredge, Clarence Major, Ronald Sukenick, Raymond Carver, Sallie Bingham, Halldor Laxness, Peter Handke, John Hawkes, and Manuel Puig. Mark Mirsky had finally talked City College into giving the magazine a small office and a stipend for a graduate student to help with production. Owing to Don's and Marianne Frisch's connections, the magazine published an astonis.h.i.+ng array of talent: J. G. Ballard, John Barth, Samuel Beckett, Robert Creeley, Kenneth Koch, Thomas McGuane, Nathalie Sarraute, Leonard Michaels, Russell Banks, Anthony Burgess, Frederick Busch, William Kittredge, Clarence Major, Ronald Sukenick, Raymond Carver, Sallie Bingham, Halldor Laxness, Peter Handke, John Hawkes, and Manuel Puig.

Don solicited a story from Grace Paley, a meditation on racism, which Mirsky found too incendiary, given racial tensions on campus. Grace submitted another piece, ”The Immigrant Story,” which ran in the magazine's third issue.

Walter Abish recalls getting a call one day from Don, whom he didn't know at the time. ”I said, 'Snow White'? He said yes. He had read some of my work in New Directions New Directions and and TriQuarterly. TriQuarterly. He invited me to be published in He invited me to be published in Fiction. Fiction. I sent him a couple of pieces and he took one of them, 'Non-Site,' about a Richard Smithson earthwork.” I sent him a couple of pieces and he took one of them, 'Non-Site,' about a Richard Smithson earthwork.”

Abish lived in New Jersey, in a cottage built into the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River and Ninety-sixth Street in Manhattan. After Don accepted his story, Don asked him to drop by with a photo to run with the piece. ”We got along very well,” Abish says. ”Unlike most writers I knew, he was very knowledgeable about the arts. My wife's an artist. The seventies was a very exciting period in the art world, and Don and I were both very intrigued by it all.”

One thing hampered the men's closeness. ”I had a health problem and couldn't drink, and that was a problem for the friends.h.i.+p,” Abish says. ”In any case, I would see Donald from time to time-we had people in common in the art world. We prioritized literature, prioritized work. He'd come to my book parties. And there were parties at his house. I was the younger writer, you know...his early work was very significant to me.”

Like Frisch, Abish observed Don's avidity toward Marion. ”She was very striking, very nice. I was quite fond of her,” he says. ”But this possessiveness was something in Donald's makeup. Once, she came home with flowers. Donald was, 'Where have you been, where have you been?' Frisch was the same way toward women. These men from a rigorous home...they don't show any pain or mercy...in one way, very stoic....I found this fascinating. There was a whole crowd like that: Frisch, Donald, Saul Steinberg. Though I felt a literary kins.h.i.+p with Donald, in the playfulness of our work, finally we were very different. I like to scrutinize things, and I want it all out. I want it all out. Donald was about concealment.” Donald was about concealment.”

Ultimately, Abish felt that, with friends and and lovers, ”Donald was just not prepared to give certain things. In giving them, he would be transformed into someone he was not.” The lovers, ”Donald was just not prepared to give certain things. In giving them, he would be transformed into someone he was not.” The Fiction Fiction group, and the writing teachers at City College, ”belonged to a different world than Donald did,” according to Abish. True, ”they seemed to satisfy something in him. Jerry Charyn is an incredibly nice guy...and Mark Mirsky...but like many literary people, Donald inhabited more than one world, and the worlds did not converge.” group, and the writing teachers at City College, ”belonged to a different world than Donald did,” according to Abish. True, ”they seemed to satisfy something in him. Jerry Charyn is an incredibly nice guy...and Mark Mirsky...but like many literary people, Donald inhabited more than one world, and the worlds did not converge.”

In part, it ”satisfied” Don to serve as a father figure to younger colleagues and students. As for his other partners: From time to time, the creative writing faculty at CCNY included John Hawkes, James Toback (who later made his name as a filmmaker), Ishmael Reed, and Frederick Tuten. Like Charyn and Mirsky, Tuten was younger than Don, but he shared Don's sensibility. ”I was taken by the idea of an impersonal fiction, one whose personality was the novel's and not apparently that of its author, an ironic work impervious to irony,” Tuten wrote.

One day, Peter J. Rondinone, one of Don's students, got up the gumption to ask Don, ”How can I be like you?” Don responded, ”How many words do you think I put into print before I sold my first short story?”

He ”had no set reading list,” says Brian Kitely, another pupil. ”He simply said, 'Read all of Western philosophy...then read some history, anthropology, history of science.' ” Kitely recalls a cla.s.s at Johns Hopkins: ”A student there said, 'But we have to eat and sleep.' 'Give up sleeping,' Barthelme replied; 'that's a good place to start.' ”

Outside of cla.s.s, and apart from Fiction Fiction, Don advanced American letters. ”One day in 1973 he crossed the street to talk to me on my stoop,” wrote Grace Paley. ” 'Grace,' he said, 'you now have enough stories for a book.' (My last book had been published in 1959.) 'Are you sure? I kind of doubt it,' I said. 'No, you do-go on upstairs and see what you can find in your files-I know I'm right.' I spent a week or so extracting stories from folders. He looked at my list at dinner at his house. 'You're missing at least two more,' he said. 'You've got to find them. I'll wait here.' ”

At Don's insistence, she pulled the stories together and published her second book, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Meanwhile, beneath Don's floor, in Kirk and Faith Sale's apartment, Thomas Pynchon had been typing away at Gravity's Rainbow. Gravity's Rainbow. Faith read several rough pages and blessed them with her editorial hand. Faith read several rough pages and blessed them with her editorial hand.

Joseph McElroy recalls having dinner one night with Don and John Barth ”down in Baltimore” around this time. McElroy's novel Lookout Cartridge Lookout Cartridge had just been published. According to McElroy, ”Barthelme said...'Well, the smart money is on you for the National Book Award.' And I was surprised to hear that, but surprised also because he was in a politically rather strong position.” (Don was set to serve as one of the NBA judges.) had just been published. According to McElroy, ”Barthelme said...'Well, the smart money is on you for the National Book Award.' And I was surprised to hear that, but surprised also because he was in a politically rather strong position.” (Don was set to serve as one of the NBA judges.) His plans for McElroy's book-if he'd had had any plans-changed when the 1974 Pulitzer Prize advisory panel ignored the unanimous recommendation of the fiction jury (Benjamin DeMott, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Alfred Kazin). The jury proclaimed any plans-changed when the 1974 Pulitzer Prize advisory panel ignored the unanimous recommendation of the fiction jury (Benjamin DeMott, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Alfred Kazin). The jury proclaimed Gravity's Rainbow Gravity's Rainbow most deserving of the fiction prize. The book was so controversial-dense, challenging, obsessive-the panel overruled the jury and offered no prize that year. most deserving of the fiction prize. The book was so controversial-dense, challenging, obsessive-the panel overruled the jury and offered no prize that year.

Later that year, in his service as a judge for the National Book Awards, Don joined Truman Capote; Timothy Foote, a book editor at Time; Time; James Boatwright, the editor of the literary journal James Boatwright, the editor of the literary journal Shenandoah; Shenandoah; and Cynthia Ozick. The judges were paid $250 apiece to read over 160 books and to sit one afternoon in an empty Broadway theater and argue with one another. and Cynthia Ozick. The judges were paid $250 apiece to read over 160 books and to sit one afternoon in an empty Broadway theater and argue with one another.

Don was determined to right the Pulitzer wrong-no easy task, given Capote's personal disregard for him (he had once called Don, in print, a ”fraudulent” writer) and Ozick's strong opinions. But Don would not be swayed, and he managed to force a split decision. The 1974 NBA in fiction went to Isaac Bashevis Singer's A Crown of Feathers and Other Short Stories A Crown of Feathers and Other Short Stories and and Gravity's Rainbow. Gravity's Rainbow.

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