Part 31 (1/2)

One of the interchapters, ”I put a name in an envelope...” was part of a catalog introduction Don had written for a Joseph Cornell exhibit at the Castelli Gallery in 1976. Cornell's spirit touches all of Overnight: Overnight: Many of the short texts involve the construction of small-scale imaginative worlds (”Holding the ladder I watch you glue...chandeliers to...[tree] limbs...”) while a number of the longer stories take place in hotels or in the midst of temporary arrangements, recalling Cornell's celebration of the ephemeral in his work (Cornell made a Many of the short texts involve the construction of small-scale imaginative worlds (”Holding the ladder I watch you glue...chandeliers to...[tree] limbs...”) while a number of the longer stories take place in hotels or in the midst of temporary arrangements, recalling Cornell's celebration of the ephemeral in his work (Cornell made a Hotel Hotel series of boxes; often, he included stamps and letters in his collages-correspondence blown on the wind). series of boxes; often, he included stamps and letters in his collages-correspondence blown on the wind).

Don's reviewers missed these echoes and aims. They seemed to have lost patience with learning from a writer how to read him. Instead, they approached Overnight Overnight with a fixed idea of ”story.” When the book did not match their preconceptions, they dismissed it. It was one thing to say, as did Anatole Broyard, that with a fixed idea of ”story.” When the book did not match their preconceptions, they dismissed it. It was one thing to say, as did Anatole Broyard, that Overnight Overnight did not represent top-drawer Barthelme. It was another to call the book nonsense without taking into account the writer's intentions. One could readily believe that ”minimalism” did not represent top-drawer Barthelme. It was another to call the book nonsense without taking into account the writer's intentions. One could readily believe that ”minimalism” was was the new literary currency: Anything beyond six-word sentences about fast food and television now seemed beyond the capacities of many readers, even those who read for a living. the new literary currency: Anything beyond six-word sentences about fast food and television now seemed beyond the capacities of many readers, even those who read for a living.

Dispirited, Don loped down the halls of the Roy Cullen Building. Fissures had opened up among the faculty. Some of them complained that the best students flocked toward Don-not just because they prized Don's teaching but also because they hoped to use his literary connections. The lunch meetings became more awkward.

”During heated discussions” at these meetings, ”Donald would often wait until everyone else had declared a position, and then weigh in with the final word, more like an arbiter than an interested party,” Lopate says. ”He was good at manipulating consensus through democratic discussion to get his way; and we made it easy for him, since everyone wanted his love and approval....Still, when a vote did go against him, he bowed sportingly to majority will. He often seemed to be holding back from using his full clout; he was like those professional actors who give the impression at social gatherings of saving their real energy for the real performance later.”

Only once did Don give in to pleasure at one of these afternoon gatherings. The group was discussing how to update faculty bios for a new promotional poster. Rosellen Brown suggested, ”Donald Barthelme-Still Famous.” Don leaned back in his chair, put his napkin to his mouth, and roared.

For all his deflation, he soldiered on with a touching almost optimism. Once, he organized a dance in a local art annex, the Lawndale, for students in the creative-writing program and the UH Art Department. He felt that students' teaching and cla.s.s schedules restricted their social lives. The party s.p.a.ce was as big as a warehouse. The young painters, in green-and-red-spattered overalls, huddled on one side of the room, shy as middle school kids, while Don's proteges crowded into the opposite corner. Finally, in an attempt to merge everyone, Don stepped into the center of the floor, wearing (as usual) a striped cotton s.h.i.+rt, khaki pants, and cowboy boots, and asked a scared young art student to dance. No matter-the painters and writers never relaxed with one another that night, to Don's great disappointment. Still, he'd tried.

For a while, he joined a graduate-student band, Moist and the Towlettes. ”I used to play the drums, you know,” he told his astonished students. The group played ratchety three-chord rock at parties and book signings. Texas Monthly Texas Monthly called it the ”worst band in Houston, if not the universe.” Soon enough, the tedious practice sessions bored Don, but at the band's first couple of gigs, he seemed transcendently pleased. At a dance one night in a bookstore parking lot, he beamed and waved his sticks like a sprightly conductor. Midway through the show, the group's backup singers wandered off into the crowd (discipline, like harmony, was not a Towlette virtue). Don laughed, hit a mighty rim shot, and carried the band into the next wild song. called it the ”worst band in Houston, if not the universe.” Soon enough, the tedious practice sessions bored Don, but at the band's first couple of gigs, he seemed transcendently pleased. At a dance one night in a bookstore parking lot, he beamed and waved his sticks like a sprightly conductor. Midway through the show, the group's backup singers wandered off into the crowd (discipline, like harmony, was not a Towlette virtue). Don laughed, hit a mighty rim shot, and carried the band into the next wild song.

53.

BETWEEN COASTS.

Houston was an easier and safer place than New York to raise a child, said Don. But he kept returning to Manhattan with his family, at first for half a year, then only in the summers. Phillip Lopate, who also spent part of his time in Manhattan, said that Don was ”slightly more speedy and nervous” in New York.

Around this time-in the spring of 1983-”Donald had this idea to make a dinner in SoHo,” says Walter Abish. ”A major dinner for a group of writers, and he planned it very, very carefully. It was a strange event. Amusing and intriguing. He invited...well, that was the thing of it. The list. I was astounded that he consulted me, but he called and said, 'Should we invite so-and-so?' Naturally, I did the only decent thing and said 'Absolutely' to everyone he mentioned. I pushed for Gaddis. Ga.s.s was there, and Coover and Hawkes, Vonnegut and his wife, Jill Krementz, who took photographs, I think. Don's agent, Lynn Nesbit, was there. She was always very friendly. Susan Sontag, the only woman writer invited.”

Pynchon couldn't make it. He wrote Don to apologize. He said he was ”between coasts, Arkansas or Lubbock or someplace like 'at.”

”Donald had picked the restaurant,” Abish says: It was very pricey, and we all had to pay our own way. About seventy-five dollars apiece, very steep back then. There was a fixed menu. It was in a loft somewhere. Very strange. Sort of monumental. The occasion made me think of Paris, you know, this group of artists. Donald was absolutely in charge of the seating. To my surprise, he seated me across from him. He was sitting with his back to the window. On his right, Coover...well, Coover selects his own place; you don't tell Coover where to sit. But he was on Don's right. Gaddis was on the other side, with Muriel Murphy nearby. And Donald barely said anything the entire meal. He did not look happy. Very, very dour. Vonnegut was to my left. To my right, Hawkes and Barth, and they were pretty jovial. In all, about twenty-one people. It seemed...since Donald had put it together, planned it for three or four weeks...it invited interpretation, and I couldn't figure it out. You couldn't take it at face value. Everyone gave a short little speech about their work and their friends.h.i.+p with the other people there. Hawkes was very eloquent, warm and nice. Gaddis was, as always, very quiet. Donald was both withdrawn and a dynamo. He was the center though he didn't dominate in any way. It was puzzling. I left with questions....

”Donald didn't socialize the way others do-he didn't like small talk,” Ed Hirsch explains. In part, the ”Postmodern Dinner” may have been Don's way of signaling to friends that his return to Houston didn't imply exile from New York or the literary world. ”The thing is, Donald's New Yorkcentric friends felt he was too big a talent to go back to Texas, back to teaching,” says Hirsch. ”But in Houston he wrote very early in the morning. He got several hours of writing done before he talked to anyone. The place was good for him.”

Naturally, his New York friends missed him terribly. ”I was afraid he'd get stuck [in Texas], what with the working presence of so much family and his responsibilities at the University of Houston,” Grace Paley recalled.

”We were family,” says Roger Angell. He missed seeing Don ”sitting and smoking in my regular armchair at my place...[trying to] keep the evening's sadness at bay. We counted on each other-a great many people felt this way about him....”

When in New York, Don proved to be a ”true good neighbor” to Phillip Lopate, helping him move furniture, offering to help him paint his apartment, giving him tips on interior design. One hot summer day, Don helped Lopate carry books and chairs up a flight of stairs into Lopate's new place on Bank Street. ”[I]t was ninety-four degrees...and several trips were required, and we must have looked a sight, Sancho Panza and the Don with his scraggly beard, pulling boxes roped together on a small dolly,” Lopate recalls. ”At one point the cart tipped over and spilled half my papers onto the sidewalk. After that, I let Donald carry the lion's share of the weight, he having a broader back and a greater liking (I told myself) for manual labor than I, as well as more steering ability. He was hilarious...joking about the indignity of being a beast of burden, and I must admit it tickled me to think of using one of America's major contemporary writers as a drayhorse. But why not take advantage when he seemed so proud of his strength, so indestructible, even in his mid-fifties?”

54.

ANNE.

Anne's mother jumped out of a window when Anne was eighteen. ”In a way, her death was not a surprise, and it was kind of a relief,” Anne says. ”It freed me.”

Don brought her to Houston. The move-in 1984-is still ”kind of hazy,” Anne admits. She'd known New York and Copenhagen; Houston was, she says, the ”armpit of the nation. It was a serious culture shock. And the weather! I felt I'd crashed these people's lives, Marion's and my father's. I wasn't made to feel unwelcome, but I think Dad and Marion were going through a difficult time.

”Dad gave me a curfew. At eighteen! I said, 'You're joking.' I'd been my own keeper since the age of seven. But he was very protective. It was sweet, really. We all had to adjust to each other. I wanted to go out into the world. I was eighteen. I smoked. I drank. I think I just wanted to live and feel it. I saw how wonderful Dad was with Kate. He had really learned to be more demonstrative and loving. It was the stable home life I had never known.”

School was a problem. ”I'd been in the gymnasium in Copenhagen, so in the States I had to take the GED, the high school equivalency test. The test was very important to Dad and Marion. I barely got into the University of Houston. I was essentially a foreigner. I had no relations.h.i.+p to sentence composition. I was a voracious reader in English, but I hadn't learned the grammar.”

While she studied at home, Don hoisted Katharine onto his shoulders and played ”horsie” with her, or took her down the street for an ice-cream cone. Later, he'd try to help Anne study, but she resented the restrictions he'd forced on her. She resisted him.

Yet fairly quickly her steady schedule and the family atmosphere began to appeal to her. ”There was a lot of cooking and dinner-table talk. It was exquisite,” she says. ”Dad and I loved to watch movies together. It was one of our favorite things to do. Especially John Wayne movies. He loved the character of John Wayne. He'd say, 'There's a Duke movie on tonight.' And Hill Street Blues. Hill Street Blues. ' 'Hill Street's on tonight,' he'd say. He thought the show was well written and the characters were well-rounded.” In these moments with him, she was ”made to feel I was his number-one daughter.” They didn't talk about Birgit.

Eventually, Anne became comfortable enough to kid her dad. ”He'd look out the window and see a woman jogging on the street in a T-s.h.i.+rt and shorts, and he'd say, 'That's a cute girl.' I'd go, 'Dad! You're a dirty old man.' ”

On many occasions students sat with Don in his living room while he read their story ma.n.u.scripts. Anne would bounce through the house, a brunette blur, all motion and smiles. Though she was younger than her father's charges, she gazed at them wryly, as if to say, Trust me, I know. know. He'll give you what he He'll give you what he wants wants to give you, and no more. You don't have anything to do with it. ”He was inspired by his students,” she says now. ”They kept his juices flowing. He really wanted to make everything work.” to give you, and no more. You don't have anything to do with it. ”He was inspired by his students,” she says now. ”They kept his juices flowing. He really wanted to make everything work.”

At the university, Anne's composition teachers were often her father's pupils. ”I remember, at one point I was flunking English,” she says. ”Dad tried to help me. There was a rubella outbreak on campus, and we wrote this story together about a character named Rubella (she had red hair). He He wrote most of it, and it got a wrote most of it, and it got a D. D. We really got a kick out of that. I wanted to tell this woman, the teaching a.s.sistant, that she'd flunked my dad.” We really got a kick out of that. I wanted to tell this woman, the teaching a.s.sistant, that she'd flunked my dad.”

Don's new family now expanded to include his daughter from a previous marriage. Occasionally, he ate lunch with his ex-wife Helen. He was building a fresh academic program, but at his old inst.i.tution. Every morning, in the hallways of the English Department, he ran into another figure from the by-gone days, Sam Southwell, his second ex-wife's former lover, who muttered under his breath about ”presence” and ”absence” in the literary theories of Jacques Derrida.

Presence/Absence was not just a theoretical binary for Don but also his daily paradox. Whenever he went to supper in a filthy student apartment, his students thought he was slumming, but theirs were the neighborhoods, and the types of rooms, he'd lived in when he was first on his own, playing music, writing stories. In dropping in on their lives, he revisited his early self. A myth-minded man, he appreciated the poignancies and ironies of all this: a search for lost youth, potency, reinvigoration; mirroring, doubling, symmetry. Here he witnessed a Kierkegaardian repet.i.tion, bound to fail.

So it was that Don invited the art critic Arthur Danto to campus to speak on the end of historical necessity and the new age of pluralism in the arts (a view completely adverse to Don's).

So it was that he invited Hans Magnus Enzensberger to campus to p.r.o.nounce the death of postmodernism. Don listened ruefully in the back of the auditorium.

So it was that he invited Susan Sontag to campus to defend narrative fiction, a forecast of the traditional turn her novels would take: an unspoken repudiation of the works, including Don's, which she had championed at the start of her career. She bristled when a student suggested that her stories were more cerebral than emotional. Don grinned, enjoying her discomfort and the student's.

He lived a pastiche of old and new lives, birthing the future while often feeling his own moment was over.

Though he tried to s.h.i.+eld Anne, she sensed his melancholy: ”Once, when I asked him if he was happy, he said, 'n.o.body's happy. I just want to go to sleep.' His mind took in so much stuff...politically...in every every way...it had to be tiring for him. And of course he found relations.h.i.+ps very difficult.” way...it had to be tiring for him. And of course he found relations.h.i.+ps very difficult.”

Karen Kennerly remembers calling from New York one night to discuss PEN business. ”I said, 'Hi. How are you?' He gave out that Barthelme sigh, the sigh of sighs. He said, 'My wife doesn't love me anymore.' He wasn't joking, but I'm sure it wasn't true, either. I said, 'You must have done something to make her stop loving you.' He didn't deny it. He went on about the sorrows of marriage.”

Yet his sadness never paralyzed him. Every few weeks, The New Yorker The New Yorker carried a new Donald Barthelme story: ”Construction,” in which the narrator vows to ”explore the mystery” of a woman named Helen (Don's ex-wife read this as a nod to their renewed friends.h.i.+p); ”Basil from Her Garden,” in which a husband admits to adultery; and ”Bluebeard,” a retelling of the fairy tale. carried a new Donald Barthelme story: ”Construction,” in which the narrator vows to ”explore the mystery” of a woman named Helen (Don's ex-wife read this as a nod to their renewed friends.h.i.+p); ”Basil from Her Garden,” in which a husband admits to adultery; and ”Bluebeard,” a retelling of the fairy tale.

In the cla.s.sroom, he was often bemused, especially when a student tried something unusual. One day, the patrician Southern writer Peter Taylor, visiting campus, sat in on a workshop. One of the students read an abstract piece. It involved the ringing of bells. Taylor was startled. ”Care to comment?” Don asked him, smiling. Decorously, Taylor declined.

In large public gatherings, Don continued to promote the writing program with astonis.h.i.+ng enthusiasm. Phillip Lopate recalled a difficult ”let-down” after a fund-raising ball one night. ”Donald and Marion, Cynthia [Macdonald] and I drove...to [Donald's] house for a nightcap,” he said, recounting the evening: The event had been pretty successful, but not as large a windfall financially as we had fantasized....Instead of sitting around having a postmortem, we-began singing songs....Donald had a lovely baritone and a great memory for lyrics: Cole Porter, musical comedy, jazz ballads. Each of us alternated proposing songs, and the others joined in...Donald seemed particularly at ease. There was no need to articulate his thoughts, except in this indirect, song-choosing fas.h.i.+on.