Part 29 (1/2)

Depressed, Don walked. All around him, New York seemed to be selling itself off to pay its debts.

The ”government isn't very good and the New York Culture Center is being sold and there is so much p.o.r.nography around...many people are persuaded that these are dark times,” Don wrote in a ”Notes and Comment” piece for The New Yorker The New Yorker. In the midst of the deterioration, he took a cue from his moviegoing and tried to make ”good and true observations.” At first, he noticed ”shrubs-whatever-” but then he looked more closely. In the window of a bakery, he saw the ”silverware, cups and saucers, sugarers and creamers, stainless steel pots and pans, and five sets of spun-candy wedding bells in their plastic wrappings.” Sadly, the bakery was going out of business. He saw a book, Graham Greene on Film Graham Greene on Film, in the open rumble seat of a parked British car. He stopped at the window of the Elephant and Castle on Greenwich Avenue to read the menu: a ”Love Omelette (hearts of artichoke, hearts of palm) for $3.05.” He studied the bulletin board inside the Perry Street Laundromat: a reading by Nelson Algren, a flyer from the ”International Committee to Reunite the Beatles, headquartered in Merrick, N. Y. Send one dollar to Let It Be.”

Don's writing began to swell with details. Buoyed by his ability to observe observe-which had never been central to his meditative fiction-he began to relax and become more comfortable with personal comment, personal revelation. He turned to what W. H. Auden had called the ”doggy life.” From such materials, much of Don's late style would grow.

”In the '70s the sheer glut of consumable culture reached almost oceanic proportions as the media-television, movies, theater, books, records, concerts, opera, dance, radio, the visual arts-poured out an endless stream of beguilement to be soaked up by vast, voracious audiences,” says Jack Kroll. For him, the decade's most important cultural development was the ”process of blurring the distinctions between serious stuff and pop stuff” (so the ”high intelligence, formal brilliance and even mythic aspiration” of a movie like The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather was inextricable from its ”entertainment value”-an example of what ”popular culture can produce under optimum conditions”). was inextricable from its ”entertainment value”-an example of what ”popular culture can produce under optimum conditions”).

Also of note was the ”attempt to come to terms with the [Vietnam] war” in movies and books, the mentality of ”big budgets, big risks, big successes, big failures” in the arts, and the ”question of the relations.h.i.+p of art to morals” (not because of John Gardner but because of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his exposure of Soviet gulags).

Of this period, Alfred Kazin wrote that American life had taught especially harsh lessons to city dwellers. ”The city arouses us with the same forces by which it defeats us,” he said.

Nearly twenty years after setting foot on the island, and despite his literary successes and fresh marriage, Don felt more defeated than aroused by his adopted city. There were too many spirits-of every kind; too many losses. As he walked through the Village, fewer and fewer faces were familiar.

-Will you always remember me?-Always.-Will you remember me a year from now?-Yes, I will.-Will you remember me two years from now?-Yes, I will.-Will you remember me five years from now?-Yes, I will.-Knock knock.Who's there?-You see?

So ends ”Great Days.” And in ”Morning,” Don concluded: -Say you're not frightened. Inspire me.-After a while, darkness, and they give up the search.

This was a far cry from the ”Heigh-ho!” that ended Don's first novel, years ago. But that book's final thought remained pertinent to him now-perhaps more so than ever. He craved a ”new principle.”

PART FIVE.

RETURN.

48.

MISS PENNYBACKER'S CASTLE.

In the fall of 1980, the poet Cynthia Macdonald, then teaching creative writing at the University of Houston, wrote Don, ”[People] are tying yellow ribbons round all the oak trees. Guess why?-in honor of the Iranian hostages.”

She said, ”You are ardently wanted by us all. Saying here what I am too inhibited to gush in person, I think you are an inventive, touching, funny, strong, wonderful writer. And I like you. To have you as a colleague would be special.” The coquettish tone, and the joke about the ribbons (no, it's not about you you, dummy-it's the hostages) was perfect, and perfectly timed. Don was intrigued.

Macdonald had met him in 1971, when she was teaching at Sarah Lawrence College. Don came to give a reading. He presented ”On Angels.” The story's unusual structure started an on-again, off.a.gain conversation with Macdonald that lasted the rest of his life. The topic was the frontier between fiction and poetry-”a kind of no-man's land,” Macdonald wrote, where she and Don felt at home. ”Poetry should only be attempted by saints and Villons,” Don often quipped. He agreed with Macdonald that poetry and prose offered ”different [kinds of] music,” but he enjoyed mixing the tunes.

Shortly after meeting Don, Macdonald moved to Houston with her husband. A former opera singer and a trained psychoa.n.a.lyst, Macdonald was by nature restless. Her marriage didn't last; she fled Texas, and wound up teaching poetry workshops at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But Houston left a lasting impression on her. The city ”has a sense of possibility that is very, very different from the Northeast,” she said. ”The att.i.tude...is, 'If you want to do something, well why not?' ” This is the same ah-h.e.l.l ah-h.e.l.l civic disposition that inspired Don's dad in the 1930s, and Philip Johnson in the 1950s. Macdonald tasted it in the early seventies. She loved the ”excitement of the city,” so in 1978, when the English Department at the University of Houston called and asked if she'd like to spearhead a new creative-writing program there, the ”Joanna Appleseed” in her stirred to life. civic disposition that inspired Don's dad in the 1930s, and Philip Johnson in the 1950s. Macdonald tasted it in the early seventies. She loved the ”excitement of the city,” so in 1978, when the English Department at the University of Houston called and asked if she'd like to spearhead a new creative-writing program there, the ”Joanna Appleseed” in her stirred to life.

Immediately, she thought of Don, but after consulting colleagues she decided to lay a solid foundation in one literary genre at a time. She phoned a fellow poet, Stanley Plumly. He was living in New York and teaching at Princeton. Eventually, Macdonald convinced him that Houston was ”on the make.” If he agreed to come, the university would need to hire two fiction writers to even out the faculty.

In her mind, the key component-as ribbons adorned Houston's thick and sumptuous trees-was to lure the city's most famous literary son back home.

From 1935 until 1970, creative writing at the University of Houston was Ruth Pennybacker's castle. She was the sole ruler-and a n.o.ble figure she was. ”She taught by offering the works of great writers as examples. And she kept her ego out of it,” said a former student, Glenda Brownback. Another UH graduate, Janet Marks, agreed. ”She creat[ed] an environment where [students] all came together. She helped us to help each other. She was very generous with her time, and she gave her all to the students.” This was the teaching model Don witnessed when he was Miss Pennybacker's pupil in the 1950s, and he carried it into his cla.s.srooms in Buffalo, Boston, and New York.

With Pennybacker's retirement in 1970, Sylvan Karchmer, who had published over one hundred stories and plays, mostly under pseudonyms, took over the creative-writing cla.s.ses with the help of a younger colleague, James Cleghorn. A few years later, Karchmer fell ill and retired. His departure coincided with the university's procurement of a grant to hire the critic Helen Vendler to study the university's programs and recommend ”paths to distinction.” She told the school to focus its energy on one area of study and marshal its resources there to achieve a national reputation.

John McNamara, then chair of the English Department, knew that creative-writing programs were inexpensive to maintain-they required no equipment and minimal library additions. Faculty salaries accounted for most of the costs. Terrell Dixon, a UH English professor, said that ”the feeling at the time was that...we should do something a little different. And when we looked at the city and looked at the department, creative writing looked like a good way to go.” Houston was booming financially; nationally, it had finally been recognized as a cultural center. Its visual and performing arts were strong: a writing program, if it could be ”about Houston,” was a natural. Houston,” was a natural.

Initially, Cynthia Macdonald refused the program directors.h.i.+p. ”I didn't want to isolate myself from the writing world,” she said. She agreed to serve as a special consultant to integrate writing into the department's literature curriculum. It was Peter St.i.tt, a poetry critic and young UH professor, who suggested recruiting Stanley Plumly.

”Houston seemed so foreign to me and it just seemed like an impossible task,” Plumly said. But at this point, Macdonald was ”captured by the feeling of what a really good creative writing program could do for the city.” She began to work on Plumly, and erased his resistance. She met him in New York. ”[W]e negotiated this program going back and forth through Central Park,” Plumly recalled.

Next, Macdonald set her sights on an off-kilter Texan living in the Village.

Don had come to enjoy teaching on a limited basis. He liked socializing with students, and watching them succeed. Still, he had resisted a full-time position. When Macdonald first approached him about Houston, he refused. But something in their conversation encouraged her not to quit asking him. He shared with her the story about the therapist he'd seen before leaving Houston in the 1960s-the one who'd told him he could return when he'd reached a certain level of achievement. ”I think I'm almost ready,” Don told Macdonald (she was, after all, an a.n.a.lyst, with a gift for drawing people out).

She asked him again. Money was a factor. So was inst.i.tutional commitment to the program. But by now, Macdonald knew Don well enough to understand what would really appeal to him: the certainty that his talents were needed. Macdonald saw that Don had a ”willingness to work” for others ”unusual” in someone ”at that level of achievement.” She appealed to his generosity.

Her overtures were brilliant-possibly no one else could have swayed him. Of course, she benefited from timing. Roger Angell was still lukewarm about the dialogue stories. The loss of so many close friends in quick succession had left Don reeling. New York City was broke, dark, dangerous. And on the positive side, Don had just started over with a new young wife. Change was in the air.

Despite Marion's steadying influence, Don struck Kirk Sale as enormously sad. The ”death of friends” was part of his melancholy. Don ”took friends.h.i.+p seriously,” Sale says, but he feels there was more to it than this. ”I would say the sadness had to do with a sense of failure to have a larger influence on literature, and the culture around him, and an awareness that he had said what he had to say and there wasn't much point in saying it over again....I think that basically [by 1980] he felt he had written himself dry, and that's the reason he agreed to go to Houston. He wouldn't say it, exactly, but I felt he was pus.h.i.+ng it, forcing [the work].”

On the other hand, Jerome Charyn feels sure Don ”didn't want want to go to Texas. He wanted to stay in New York. But he couldn't get the kind of job that would have supported him.” Anne was in her teens, college expenses were looming, and Don's CCNY salary wasn't much help there. to go to Texas. He wanted to stay in New York. But he couldn't get the kind of job that would have supported him.” Anne was in her teens, college expenses were looming, and Don's CCNY salary wasn't much help there.

Marion had gotten profit sharing when she left Time Time, and earned $25,000 the second year she freelanced. Still, Don wanted to take financial pressure off his writing and he turned to his dad for advice.

”The biggest mistake you can make is to a.s.sume a.s.sume that what exists now will be true [later],” the elder Barthelme said. ”So all the determinations based on current facts are suspect.” that what exists now will be true [later],” the elder Barthelme said. ”So all the determinations based on current facts are suspect.”

He told Don that, when it came to financial planning, the one ”advantage your mother and I have [is that] we don't expect [to live] another ten years.” More than anything else, it may have been this talk of mortality that convinced Don he should return to Texas.

”I felt that he needed to be in Houston again for a while,” wrote Helen Moore Barthelme. ”He was fifty years old and sad” at the pa.s.sing of friends. Recently, Mary Ann Hayes, whom Don had known since the 1950s, when they had worked together at the University of Houston, had died of a brain tumor. Don had seen her in New York when she came through on a visit. ”Her visit and subsequent death...deeply affected” him, Helen said.

So when Cynthia Macdonald called again, putting out another feeler, Don agreed to go to Houston for a year, beginning in September 1981. (”I was furious when [City College] let him go and will never forgive the Chairman at that juncture for not fighting harder [to keep him],” says Mark Mirsky.) Harrison Starr figured that ”going to Texas would be a good thing [for Donald]. Texas would give him a little grounding to do whatever came next.” He understood that Don's departure, even on a part-time basis, would be a blow to New York's literary culture. Starr says, ”Donald, even though he was an avant-garde writer, was considered in New York by most of the people I knew as one of the best writers in America, if not the the best-certainly, one of the top three or four writers of any significance. And the best-certainly, one of the top three or four writers of any significance. And the best best writer, word for word, pound for pound-no matter how many commas they tried to put in, in the G.o.dd.a.m.n writer, word for word, pound for pound-no matter how many commas they tried to put in, in the G.o.dd.a.m.n New Yorker New Yorker.”

”People I knew used to think that one of the great things about being in New York was Donald,” Roger Angell says.

”I thought that moving to Houston would be interesting although it surprised me because Don had kind of fled Houston when he first went to New York,” Marion says. ”It didn't mean we would pull up stakes because initially it was every other semester. It was nice to have a steady salary and we had happily visited Don's parents a number of times in the past, and Joan and the brothers were around.”

Also, Marion had learned she was pregnant. ”I was totally content with just about anything,” she says.

Don's parents, especially his mother, welcomed the news of Don's return. His father wrote him in April 1981: ”Your mother's check-up...turned out OK-or so the Doctor said-what does he know? Pete's still in trauma about not being married [anymore]. Joan is wra.s.sling with her job and the background of the kids and a husband. Rick glows even by daylight-let him enjoy it. Steve is-Steve[,] and I guess he is ent.i.tled to play the game anyway he wants to. I guess we'll see you this fall.”

49.

THE KING.